This is an original article from the NIST Manufacturing Innovation Blog.

This blog is part one of a series on cybersecurity and Industry 4.0.

This morning my favorite local morning news program had an interesting segment on new slang words and what they mean. While the definitions were probably not necessary for Millennials or Generation Z, for Baby Boomers like me it was an eye-opening vocabulary lesson. I must admit I didn’t know what boujee meant, even though I had heard it a few times – like when my niece said the wine glasses I used at Thanksgiving were boujee.

This article will focus on technology as well as Training Within Industry - Job Instruction (TWI-JI) module to capture standardized work.

The challenge: The onboarding process is challenging. The primary reason is two-fold.

First, if tasks are documented, they are usually written and describe the steps in the process. However, the onboarding process is much more than tasks. It involves a logical format that often uses more sensory input to be successful (e.g. vision or audio). Only, providing a written document for training has limited effectiveness as it does not consider all sensory input. Different individuals capture knowledge differently. Providing multiple methods or considering different sensory inputs will provide a more effective educational session.

In the spring of 2021, IMEC, Illinois Manufacturers Association (IMA), Technology & Manufacturing Association (TMA), and Valley Industrial Association (VIA) partnered with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research to survey manufacturers about their adoption of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies and processes, achieving a phenomenal 87% response rate.

Written by Matthew Inniger of Manager of the  Advanced Technology Program of CIFT, part of  Ohio MEP. This article first appeared on the NIST Manufacturing Innovation Blog. 

This is an exciting time in the food manufacturing industry. The innovations and technology associated with Industry 4.0 are making it easier for small and medium-sized manufacturers to overcome obstacles in ways that at one point would not have been considered. While manufacturers have previously been slower to move toward incorporating advanced industry technologies due to the high level of regulation and biologically complex products with which they work, innovation is becoming more widely accepted as a key to industry sustainability. Two examples of such Industry 4.0 technologies are automation and augmented reality.

Knowledge transfer for new employees is often the bottleneck to effective and efficient onboarding and can be a major source of downtime when the right knowledge is unavailable on-site. The RealWear HMT-1 provides solutions to these problems, and more, in an intuitive and safe way.

This is an original article written by Shekhar Chandrashekhar of California Manufacturing Technology Consulting, part of the MEP National Network.

Today, most manufacturers are engaged in activities that could be considered part of “Industry 4.0.” (70% according to the World Economic Forum’s [WEF] white paper, “Fourth Industrial Revolution: Beacons of Technology and Innovation in Manufacturing”).

Who is Fuss & O’Neill?

Fuss and O’Neill Manufacturing Solutions provides mentoring, training, and engineering services for industrial and municipal clients to help them achieve safer, more cost effective productivity. In a recent interview with Larry Bouvier, Vice President and Partner at Fuss & O’Neill, IMEC got a deeper look into how they work with manufacturers and set themselves apart from the competition – one of many reasons they are one of IMEC’s top Third Party Resource partners.