A researcher at the University of North Texas has successfully demonstrated a drone capable of supplementing cellular service during large-scale disasters and catastrophes. When Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana in 2005, cell towers fell, hampering rescue and response efforts.

For young and mature mature designers alike, I’d like to offer a word to the wise: Talk to your board house before you start on the new design. We spend a lot of time helping designers to bring their pride and joy to a state of manufacturability after the fact. It would always be much better to have had a chance to avoid the mess rather than to clean it up.

Today, doing business is like a Formula One race -- it's all about teamwork and collaboration. Drivers Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton don't win races on their own. They rely on the backing of their racing teams and on the power of their cars' engines (Red Bull Racing / Renault and McLaren Racing / Mercedes-Benz, respectively).

Advances in connectivity are at the heart of Industry 4.0, with wide-ranging benefits for the way businesses are run. For manufacturing, one of the most important areas is asset management, in particular, how to create efficiencies and provide insight into the whole production chain.

This year’s summit was different in that the Lean Accounting Summit was combined with Lean Management and Lean People Development into Lean Leadership to include the people development aspect of being a lean enterprise. Co-founder Dwayne Butcher, said, “It’s about time that the whole enterprise be involved in becoming a lean company.

The manufacturing sector has shown some growth over the past few years.  Since 2011, the sector has created jobs every year, a 6-year expansion that exceeds the 5-year expansion experienced 1994-1998, according to a new report from consulting firm Headlight Data. The report showed that the industry has created nearly 500,000 new jobs in the last 6 years.  

Thousands of miles of buried optical fibers crisscross California’s San Francisco Bay Area delivering high-speed internet and HD video to homes and businesses. Biondo Biondi, a professor of geophysics at Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, dreams of turning that dense network into an inexpensive “billion sensors” observatory for continuously monitoring and studying earthquakes.

The manufacturing industry is currently undergoing a digital transformation, in which new business models are being engineered to improve time to market as a means of meeting customer demand for more instant services and products.

Almost every manufacturing executive I know says that today’s rapidly changing landscape is putting pressure on their business. Finding and keeping good people, increasing efficiency and speed to market, gaining a competitive advantage through innovation … these are not new concerns, and yet, they feel more challenging than ever.

Flexible, wearable devices that can be used to monitor your health or your environment are increasing in popularity – yet they can’t beat the performance and efficiency of traditional rigid devices, which have a superior ability to convert body heat into usable energy.

CAR companies have long talked a good game when it comes to harnessing technology that threatens to undermine the business of making and selling vehicles. In the 1990s, as the dotcom boom was in full swing, Jac Nasser, then boss of Ford, said that the new business models the internet would enable meant that his firm would outsource the dull task of assembling cars and reinvent itself as a mobility company, selling transport as a service. Mr Nasser was too early with this insight. Only now are most big carmakers teaming up with tech firms that offer transport services, on the road to becoming mobility providers. But they in turn may have left it too late.

More than a century and a quarter later, NNS is on the front lines of manufacturers implementing augmented reality into any number of processes. The nautical leader, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, started to explore AR in 2007 and introduced the burgeoning technology to its shipyard in 2011 as part of a larger digital effort, according to engineering manager Patrick Ryan.

Futurism gives us a really cool visual infographics about what the current technology is for data transfer and internet. Is this what our "future" looks like? Can't wait to be able to download and transfer files at that speed!

In partnership with Sony Storage Media Solutions, IBM has broken its previous record for the world’s densest tape drive, announcing a product capable of storing 330 terabytes of uncompressed data. That’s more storage than the world’s biggest hard drives, capable of holding about 330 million books. The tape drive’s cartridge could fit into the palm of a person’s hand.IBM and Sony's successful development of a magnetic tape storage cartridge that can store more than 300+ terabytes of data is sure to make some huge ripples in the data storage industry, even the cloud platforms! Thanks Futurism for this update!

Work on Marea, a high-capacity subsea cable spanning the 6,437 kilometers (4,000 miles) between Bilbao, Spain, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, has been completed. Microsoft and Facebook collaborated on the development, design, and implementation of the cable, while a third partner, global communication infrastructure specialist Telxius, was responsible for its construction and will take care of maintenance.

Cinematic camera maker RED has a smartphone on the way – the Hydrogen, which boasts a great video camera as well as a “holographic display” that we know relatively little about, despite MKBHD getting some hands-on time with the phone ahead of its release. Now, we know more because RED CEO Jim Jannard named HP Labs spin-out Leia Inc. as the display tech partner (via Engadget).

The next generation of electronics is going to call for computer chips just a few atoms thick -- which is why it’s going to need alternatives to silicon.

Whether facing a major product launch or compiling standard monthly forecasts, the accuracy of demand forecasts are crucial. No one understands this as intimately as Apple who is fresh off of its much-anticipated iPhone X, 8, and 8 Plus product launches. Apple, despite its affinity for releasing limited amounts of its highly demanded new devices to further stoke demand, offers an interesting example of the complexities associated with forecasting.

Mazak has many options when it comes to turning centers with Multi-Tasking capabilities. Two such machine series, Mazak’s MULTIPLEX Series and HQR Series, accomplish this in different ways.

By 2030, electronics content will account for 50 percent of an automobile’s total production cost. Earlier this decade, it was only 30 percent. As the amount of onboard electronic components increases, packaging and weight become critical issues facing automotive engineers. The solution may be a new breed of flexible electronics.