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December 30, 2005

Aforetime New Year's Wishes!

A bit too soon, sure, but we at Industrial Market Trends wish our dear readers the most pleasant of New Year's celebrations. See you under the coffee table. Catch you in 2006. Cheers.

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Light Thursday: Best of the Best of the Best, Part Deux

Best of the Best of the Best of 2005…continued…from Intel to Oprah, movies to wine, and sustainable corporations to things said when they thought the mics were off.

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December 29, 2005

Light Thursday: Best of the Best of the Best

If you're at work at all this week, you'll be off tomorrow for New Year's Eve, or at least heading out early. So, instead of Light Friday, we now officially have Light Thursday (With Part II of this piece to appear in tomorrow's Light Friday, just in case anyone's paying attention. 'Tis the time of year when media becomes obsessed with lists. In keeping with that time-honored tradition, we bring you some of the Best Lists of 2005.

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Reprocessing Nuclear Waste: Yucca Mountain, or a Hole in the Ground

Apparently, dealing with nuclear power plants' radioactive waste isn't as easy as originally thought to be. Yucca Mountain's big hole in the ground, wherein excess, unusable radioactive waste was decided to be deposited, is in a sort of purgatory. So an ambitious new kind of reprocessing has been proposed.

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December 28, 2005

Where is Google Going — Or Taking Us?

Wired magazine co-founder John Batelle, in an excellent article on CNN.com (The Future of Online Search), says "Search is one of the hardest computer science problems in the world." Let's take a look at where that statement is, and where it might be going.

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December 27, 2005

Senate Blocks Drilling in Alaska's ANWR

After a debaucherous holiday, we're back and diving right in to bringing you some significant info. Coming during the last few days before the Senate left for the holidays, a vote came down on Wednesday blocking drilling in Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge -- a Christmas gift for Democrats (and some Republicans) but a lump of coal for most Republicans.

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December 22, 2005

Happy Holidays, Dear Readers!

This will be our last pre-holiday post, until we return next Tuesday. From the IMT blog, we wish our dear readers a Merry Christmas (or cheer for whichever holiday you intend to celebrate). Happy Holidays! Be safe, but party hard. We sure will.

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Wal-Mart Thinks Supply Chain Issues Are Tough? Feh. Try Being Santa.

Inside is a (mostly) lighter take on Christmas: Business considerations of Santa's Global Supply Chain Ops. Hey, even Santa's heading for an RFID implementation.

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December 21, 2005

Manufacturing Christmas

Three staples of Christmas in America — the Christmas Card, Christmas Tree lighting and even Christmas Trees themselves — have their own histories of engineering, manufacturing and innovation.

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December 20, 2005

Dirty Little Secret of Holiday (Re-)Gifts

It’s that efficient and practical but guilt-inducing shame that so many people take part in post-Christmas every year. The guilt is worse than ignoring that diet in favor of spiked eggnog and festively fattening sugar cookies. It’s recycling that stupid snowflake sweater from a clueless relative. It is re-gifting. And, although arguably socially acceptable, there are certain rules by which to abide.

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December 19, 2005

Old Manufacturing Plants Never Die. Or Do They? Should They?

Is manufacturing really doomed in the U.S.? Or are there signs of hope? Some stats indicate that U.S. manufacturing is coming back, while most seem to indicate that we'll forever be a service economy. But look beyond the stats; look around your area.

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December 16, 2005

Light Friday: Heaven on eBay, Pinched Grinch, Mashed Artichokes...

...a haunted 1992 Buick, a song for engineers, Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective, and so much more in this week's exclusive Getting-Close-to-Christmas Edition of Light Friday.

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Creative Baby Boomers Can Win $100,000!

We’ve had a great many reader comments (some decisive; some skeptical; some insightful; some, uh, "passionately obtuse") posted to recent coverage of Baby Boomers and a dubious labor gap. As such, we call your attention to this cool find -- a new contest that could win entrepreneurial age 60+ers $100,000 each.

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December 15, 2005

Congress Poised to Pass Law Regulating Security of Chemical Plants

Congress is now poised to try passing a law that regulates security both in and around chemical and petrochemical plants, which security experts say are among the most potentially deadly terrorist targets in the nation.

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December 14, 2005

Hydraulics, Servos and Gears – Oh, My!

Robotics seems to be one of the few areas of technology that makes it into the national media on a fairly regular basis. To clarify that observation, it's one of the few "hard" technologies to do so. As an engineer, what do you think of the future of robots?

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December 13, 2005

New Year's Resolution: Earned Value Management

As the deadline for development of comprehensive policies for agencies’ use of Earned Value Management (EVM) rapidly approaches — December 31— the time to understand and plan for the requirement is now.

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December 12, 2005

IMT Premier Edition: The Great Engineering Gift Guide – 2005

While I typically don't get into the Christmas spirit until about 6 p.m. on December 24th, I wondered what cool gifts are available for the engineers in your midst, family, or circle of friends. If you're shopping, there's still enough time. If you're putting together a list, maybe there are a couple items here that you could highlight and pass along to Santa.

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December 9, 2005

Light Friday: Document Ruination, SUV Levitation, Cat Refrigeration...

…and much, much more in this week's edition of As the World Turns (Off Its Axis). Hey, I don't make this stuff up. I'm simply a communication conduit.

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December 8, 2005

FutureGen, DOE Partner for Coal-Fueled Power Plant Prototype

The U.S. Dept. of Energy this week entered into a cooperative agreement with the FutureGen Industrial Alliance to develop and site FutureGen, a $1 billion prototype of a coal-fueled power plant with a target of zero emissions, hydrogen production and carbon dioxide sequestration.

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December 7, 2005

Trick Engineering Question: Everyone Knows that an Iceberg Sank the Titanic, Right?

I love movies. While recently watching James Cameron's Titanic, opinions and reviews aside, I wondered, "Did an iceberg really sink the Titanic?" As it turns out — surprisingly — that was a reasonable question.

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December 6, 2005

U.S. Manufacturing 2005: A Panoramic View

Throughout the year, we’ve covered various trends of U.S. manufacturing. Now we’ll take our wide-angle lens to 2005’s overall industry. Like Sergio Leone, we’ll view the good, the bad and the ugly.

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Report Confirms Skilled Labor Gap Already Impacting

We’ve frequently covered the purported threat of an impending loss of manufacturing’s skilled workers. A new report now offers in-depth data that show the labor shortage is not only inevitable, but it is already affecting manufacturers.

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Happy Returns In 2006: Year-End Tax Tips

Companies need to have their last-minute tax planning for the current year nearly complete by mid-December. Here we offer a few quick tips for businesses getting their finances in order.

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Top Technology Trends of 2005

Rather than the introduction of brand-new technologies, this year instead saw a number of established technologies come of age. Innovative nonetheless, these technology trends peaked or neared peaking in 2005.

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Burning Question

What's on your business' holiday wish list?

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Holiday Facts to Enhance Productivity

Your Christmas vacation is so close you can taste the cocoa, and you’re quickly losing your motivation to be productive in the office. Seeing as you’re not working anyhow, warm up to these fun holiday facts.

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Recommended Reading

Harvard physics professor Lisa Randall explores particle physics, string theory and cosmology, paying particular attention to the thesis that more physical dimensions exist than are usually acknowledged.

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Insects, Cabbage Can Teach Engineers

Forget textbooks. Engineers are advised to look to nature for teaching. In particular, according to scientists and researchers, engineers can learn a few things from ants, bees and Zen-fully smelly cabbage.

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Volcanic Ash Mis-Prints

The mystery over when humans first populated the Americas continues to deepen. Footprint findings from July may not be written into the history books after all.

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December 5, 2005

The Great Engineering Week — On Television

While the following are appearing on my local Comcast cable, most mentions within are from national stations and are included in Basic Cable, so you should be able to find them. Times, of course, will vary, so check your local listings as well as digital cable on-demand offerings.

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December 2, 2005

Light Friday: Computerized Chicken Jackets, Earth Songs (Cont.), Bionic Hands...

...interesting results of rotted wood, and even more ways to know if you’re really an engineer.

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December 1, 2005

Oil Exploration and Drilling in Alaska, Part II

We've touched on just a few of the elements of drilling in the ANWR that will affect all of us. Let's resume with the people who live there...

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November 30, 2005

Oil Exploration and Drilling in Alaska, Part I

The plan for oil drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been scuttled. It's expected that it's not over yet, though, with senior Senators likely to insist on this President Bush priority.

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November 29, 2005

2009 to See Global Motorcycle Demand Exceed 41mil Units

Global motorcycle demand is forecast to advance 4.9 percent annually through 2009 to 41.6 million units -- valued at almost $40 billion. And motorcycles will run on soybeans in 2007.

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November 28, 2005

PNN Exclusive! Part III: An Interview with My Daughter, the Six Sigma Black Belt

More on bureaucracies, fixing things without Six Sigma, and what's with this Green Belt/Black Belt stuff? A conclusion to a three-part interview series...

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November 25, 2005

Ghostly Light Friday

They're in the 'hood, the machine (pick-up truck), television, and even in civil engineering. Beware.

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November 23, 2005

PNN Exclusive! Part II: An Interview with My Daughter, the Six Sigma Black Belt

Bureaucracies, committees, and a few reasons why Six Sigma sometimes fails.

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November 22, 2005

'Digging' Boston’s Highway-Tunnel System

Considered the largest and most complex highway-and-tunnel project in our nation’s history, Boston’s “Big Dig,” in structural scale and scheme, is comparable to the great projects of the last century, including the Panama Canal, the “Chunnel” and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

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Innovative Eye for Cinema Design

EYE Cinema's design mixes tradition with technology, as the Galway movie theater snubs its figurative nose at conventional-designed cinemas. "A living canvas at one of the most prominent sites in the city, the traditional cinema experience is turned back-to-front."

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Ford Marries Brawn, Brains

Targeting those who do business on the road, Ford soon will offer wireless mobile offices in its F-series pickups. Innovatively packaging familiar technology, the foundation will be a mobile computer with GPS, wireless broadband and a printer, with add-ons.

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Vaccinations Without the Prick

Although categorizing it as a gadget may seem dubious, an immunotherapeutics company's needle-less vaccine gun deserves acknowledgement for its innovative design, particularly in function: PMED enables shots without the prick of a needle.

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Burning Question

If you could redesign one thing — anything at all — what would it be?

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Surfware CAD/CAM: ‘Take That, Acute Angles!’

What would a “Dazzling Designs” issue of the IMT e-newsletter be without covering CAD/CAM? For this topic, we looked to a recent IndustryWeek Technology & Innovation Awards’ recipient, Surfware Inc.’s patent-pending TrueMill toolpath technology.

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Recommended Reading

Peter Drucker, considered to be the father of modern business management theory, recently passed on. In this book, Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can, and must, be learned.

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Are We Lacking Engineers? Or Are Engineers Lacking? (Does It Matter?)

Many United States companies say they are facing an alarmingly growing trend; that is, a severe shortage of engineers. Contrary to this belief, however, many others say there is actually an engineer surplus. Seriously, what is going on?!?

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'Gentlemen, We Can Rebuild Him. We Have the Technology.'

A ‘na-na-na-na-na’-Neuro-Controlled Bionic Arm allows its only amputee user to move his prosthetic arm simply by thinking it. Whereas he once lacked an arm, the device allows the user to be "better, stronger, faster" — the world’s first bionic man.

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November 21, 2005

PNN Exclusive! Part I: An Interview with My Daughter, the Six Sigma Black Belt

In this first installment of a three-part series, we explore a blog item published last week (Six Sigma: Is It Greek to You?), taking a look at Six Sigma overall, the joys of statistics, and whether or not any philosophy or methodology should be applied across an enterprise.

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November 18, 2005

Light Friday: Scotty Again Airborne, Boosting Busts, Pirate Excuses, Radish Assault, Zen and a Hotdog

OK. I'm trying to be politically correct here. There are no references to alternative lifestyles, binge drinking, or eating goldfish in this week's selection of The Bizarre But True. Here are several interesting stories — some true, some not — and even a couple of engineering and science-related items in this installment.

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November 17, 2005

Boeing Goes the Distance…Goes for Speed…Goes Nonstop.

A Boeing Co. jet arrived in London from Hong Kong on November 10, breaking the record for the longest nonstop flight by a commercial jet, a record previously set in 1989.

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November 16, 2005

What Race Takes 8 Months to Complete Over a Course of More than 35,000 Miles?

That's in statute miles; this year's Volvo Ocean Race course is 31,000 nautical miles — in sailboats. OK, yachts.

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November 15, 2005

Employees Needed: Make Money Spending Money

There is currently a shortage of people with the right skills, education and experience to play strategic sourcing roles as purchasing professionals. If you meet the above requirements, companies are willing to pay competitively for you.

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November 11, 2005

Light Friday: Prehistoric Discovery, Accident Prevention, an Ostrich and a Deer. 'These Are a Few of My Favorite Things…'

No, there is no pattern to this week's selection. Well, there is. Sort of. But, as usual, that pattern isn't consistent. But wait, if it's consistently inconsistent, then maybe there's a pattern…

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November 10, 2005

Unaddressed Standards Undressed

Earlier this week, we stripped down ISO (and, though briefly, IEC) standards to their purpose and development process. Now we will do the same with a few more organizations and their development of industry standards, particularly ASTM.

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The iPod: It's Not Just for Eminem Commercials Anymore

Hidden capabilities and available add-ons can turn your play-only iPod into a serious business tool. Read on to find out just a few ways to teach your iPod to walk and chew gum…

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November 9, 2005

The Baghdad Bomb Squad

Unless your blood runs red, white and blue — or you have a death wish — finding, disarming and disposing of bombs in Iraq cannot be a fun thing by any definition. Robots, however, have made that horrific task a little easier —and a lot safer for humans. Umm, should we cut the red wire or the blue wire?

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November 8, 2005

Six Sigma: Is It Greek to You?

Arriving in the 1980s — as did corporate scandals, portable-phone innovations and “Apple fever” — Six Sigma is still considered by some to be not yet fully realized. What is the philosophy all about? Is it like Greek to you? (Well, it sorta comes from Greek.)

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So You're Leaning Toward Lean ...

Like many philosophies, lean manufacturing is somewhat conceptual. But is it beneficial? Dispensable? Is there a correct way to adopt it? Where does lean stand in the industry? Is it empirically verifiable? Actually, what does lean mean?

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Clarifying Just In Time ... As Needed

Oft considered one part of a "lean bundle," Just In Time (JIT) is both a comprehensive inventory/manufacturing control system and a managerial philosophy in which no materials are purchased and no products are manufactured until they are needed. It is not a technique.

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Because You've Gotta Have Standards (or At Least Understand Them)

To have products and services that universally perform, companies must have a common framework, or standards. Do you know the exact connotation of international standards? We'll clarify what international standards are, particularly ISO, as well as their contributions.

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Burning Question

Create a term or acronym for your own business/manufacturing strategy.

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Speculating MIL-SPEC’s Meaning

Predictably similar to so many other industry terms and phrases, MIL-SPEC and its numerous synonyms are amorphous. Tasking a targeted explanation is not a simple achievement. Though it lacks that one clear-cut definition -- for you, dear readers, we’ll try anyway.

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Recommended Reading

Dr. Jeffrey Liker, an authority on Toyota's lean methods, reveals the management principles behind the auto firm's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability, explaining how a business can adopt these principles for improvement in speed, costs and quality.

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Chips for Light Speed

Stanford University engineers last month reported their discovery on how to modulate a beam of laser light up to 100 billion times per second with two materials widely used in the semiconductor industry.

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Houses For Sail

Due to harsh weather and a global climate change, many hydrologists, architects and city planners are seeking ways to protect lowland housing. Some Dutch architects say, “If we can’t fight the sea, we’ll join it.” Hence amphibious housing.

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November 7, 2005

Adobe vs. Autodesk: This Is Getting Really Interesting

Both companies have the expertise and the will to create a universal format for sharing engineering drawings and, apparently, neither is willing to give a scaled inch.

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November 4, 2005

Employees Needed: Make Money Spending Money

There is currently a shortage of people with the right skills, education and experience to play strategic sourcing roles as purchasing professionals. If you meet the above requirements, companies are willing to pay competitively for you.

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Alaska Piping Up...Again

At an estimated $20 billion, it is being called the largest private construction project in North American history. Now the decades-long issue of pipelining Alaska’s natural gas is coming to a head.

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Light Friday: Brilliant New Web Advertising Paradigm, Bezos and Google, Adhesives Update, and the Value of Anger.

This week's selection of not completely light news and a few funnies.

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November 3, 2005

Models with Warped Branes to Explain Weak Gravity?

Of Interest: Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randall, along with John Hopkins professor Raman Sundrum, has come up with a possible explanation of why gravity is so weak compared with the other forces of nature. It has something to do with models with warped membranes, dimensions and Oreos.

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November 2, 2005

Cutting the Cord.

I’ve predicted for years that phones plugged into a wired grid will go the way of the B&W television set. Hey, finally looks like I got one!

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November 1, 2005

New York Named Logistics Leader

Although the state may not be renowned as the most people-friendly metropolitan area in the U.S., New York is the most logistics-friendly. This according to Expansion Management and Logistics Today magazines’ annual rankings.

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October 31, 2005

Is Broadband Over Power Lines (BPL) Viable?

While other broadband technologies seem to be getting all the attention, a citywide BPL installation in Manassas, VA, begs the question: Is BPL feasible?

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October 28, 2005

Light Friday: Halloween, Depressed Dogs, Newly Discovered Engineering Quotes, and Gigantic Mushrooms

A selection of tidbits defying both gravity and description lies within.

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October 27, 2005

Consumer Confidence Slips Again; Finger-Pointing Ensues

Consumer confidence has slipped again, according to the latest Consumer Confidence Index, falling to a two-year low. Economists are surprised, and the finger-pointing begins.

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October 26, 2005

Going Nuclear, Part III

Q1: What's been the safest, most widespread use of nuclear power?
A1: You might be surprised.
Q2: Should waste be buried, vitrified and buried, or reprocessed?
A2: Seems no one's quite sure.

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October 25, 2005

Biometrics Beyond Prime Time

Biometrics is no longer such a leading-edge technology as to only appear in such far-fetched circumstances as those found on TV shows such as 24, Alias and CSI. Rather, it is increasingly being incorporated into the real-world enterprise.

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