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.

There are literally thousands of options that you can pursue in manufacturing, with the potential return on investment varying from a -100% return to a 100%+ return. The challenge for manufacturing companies is to have a process to determine what the next steps should be. IMEC has a basic process that can help you to navigate these waters and bring some clarity to your next step.

This is an original article from Fast Radius.

When people think of additive manufacturing (AM), the first thing that often comes to mind is prototyping. When you need to iterate on a design quickly without the constraints of traditional manufacturing runs, AM works well because there’s no hard tooling involved, making rapid iteration possible.

Say what you want about 2020, but it forced each of us to push our personal and professional boundaries of accepting change and quickly adapting to our new reality. One of the greatest lessons we should take away from this year is that we are capable of accelerated change when forced to do so. We now know that we are capable of rapid change and it will be the norm in our professional lives moving forward. We now must embrace change more quickly than ever. With industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (iIOT) on our doorstep, we have the opportunity to make the greatest leap forward in manufacturing in 2021 that we have seen in 50 years.

Written by Michael Taylor, Mechanical engineer and project manager at NIST MEP.

The COVID-19 crisis is rapidly accelerating our need to prepare for a digital transformation and creating a digital strategy will be a roadmap for the transformation. The “new norm” of navigating the digital landscape in COVID times, highlights the reality of moving past the buzz words and catchy phrases, to aspiring to undertake a digital transformation agenda with both near and long-term strategic objectives in mind. This crisis presents its challenges to digital transformation planning: while certain sectors of the manufacturing industry are thriving, others are battling the fast-paced changes, challenges, and constraints.

Written by Celia Paulsen, NIST.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered robots, 3D printing, the Internet of Things (IoT)...there’s a whole world of advanced manufacturing technology and innovation just waiting for small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) who want to step up their digital game. Unfortunately, manufacturing digitization can present some fundamental challenges, like added cybersecurity risk.

This is an original article by Steve Cavolick of LRS IT Solutions.

The economic downturn from the Coronavirus has rewritten the rules of business and caused entire verticals to change direction overnight, and manufacturing is one of the industries that has morphed quickly in order to lead the country through the pandemic.

When demand exploded earlier this year for goods that sanitized and machines to help very sick people breathe, facilities that produced consumable alcohol switched to making anti-microbial gels and auto manufacturers stopped producing cars in order to build ventilators.