CompositesWorld

FEB 2018

CompositesWorld

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CompositesWorld.com 17 TRENDS CW: What are some things a company can do to get on the road to higher efficiency and higher rate production? ABB: When someone approaches us like that, we obvi- ously ask some more questions. What's going on? Where are your challenges? Where are your pain points? In most cases, the root cause for all of this is a production envi- ronment that grew more challenging either by complexity or by volume. And, for whatever reason, the investment did not keep up with that. And so the systems and processes are just not suitable to deal with that level of complexity or volume. …. And if you throw more people and more paper at it, it only makes things worse. …. We start by solving the most elementary need to digitize the process. How do we integrate the data? How do we automate data collection? And there we would introduce sensors, for example, we put RFID or any other sensor — could be Bluetooth — on every material, every tool, every part that moves around. Now we are working with customers on temperature sensing. What about humid- ity sensing? But this is a lot of data that did not exist, or existed in paperwork somewhere. …. The pain points in composites are in tracking, managing the materials — not just the raw materials but the work in progress …. As we develop a dialog, we pilot a system, and eventually deploy it. And deployments can be very quick. CAMX 2017 was originally scheduled for September 2017 in Orlando, FL, US, but Hurricane Irma blew it off course and into December. The postponed show was no worse for the wear and proved, again, the dynamism of the composites industry's largest market. CompositesWorld was there, and you can see our reporting online in several places, including summaries from senior editors Ginger Gardiner ( short.gardnerweb.com/CAMX17GG ) and Sara Black (short. compositesworld.com/CAMX17SB) and editor-in-chief Jeff Sloan ( short.gardnerweb.com/CAMX17JS ). And if video is more your speed, see the show here: short.gardnerweb.com/CAMX17V. Catching up with CAMX 2017 Source | CW

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