The Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, has been a decade in the making. It is the converging of IT (Information Technology) and OT (Operational Technology) and is driving the transformation of connectivity, intelligence, and flexible automation in the manufacturing industry. Industry 4.0 is a sort of technology toolbox with the goal of digitizing data, in real time, …
The manufacturing industry is changing, and many organizations are utilizing Robotic Process Automation to do business these days. Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, is a crucial component of the fourth industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 is the shift in manufacturing that is increasingly using digital solutions to solve physical problems. An RPA is an …
The importance of Supply Chain Management has been crucial these past 9 months. Covid-19 has challenged companies’ abilities to adapt quickly in a rapidly changing global supply chain. In the last decade companies have increasingly streamlined their supply chains, but with the uncertainty of Coronavirus, agility has become a big focus in materials management as well as supply chain management. These past few months …
Supply chain professionals at every stage of their career know there is increasing risk in our global supply chain – they see it, and at times, they really feel it. It may not have been as easy to quantify, though as it is now, thanks to the McKinsey Global Institute …
Gartner, the leading research and advisory company, put together a list of recommendations outlining actions technology driven organizations should take in response to both short- and long-term effects of the Covid crisis. Not only has Covid put major stress on individuals and businesses in the present-day, but we will unfortunately …
Paper. Email. Spreadsheets. Compared to the automated, fast-paced environment of manufacturing, these tools are antiquated, cumbersome, and slow. Yet supply chain managers rely on paper, emails, and spreadsheets every day for critical functions including material handling. This often leads to costly production outages due to material flow or other avoidable …
As organizations reopen in-person services, they need to keep employees and customers safe. StrataFlows’ COVID-19 employee self-assessment module helps minimize the risk of exposure to someone infectious with COVID-19 as organizations provide important in-person services. Employees can use StrataFlows’ COVID-19 self-assessment survey module before reporting to work each day. You can …
7 steps to building more resilient material flow processes Even “last mile” material flow disruptions, close to the Point of Use (POU) in the supply chain, quickly result in significant delays and unnecessary financial cost when it brings production to a halt. Mitigate material flow exceptions using the following recommendations: …
The core principles of Material Requirements Planning (MRP) were first constructed by Joseph Orlicky in 1964. That same year, Black & Decker served as the pioneer in employing this netting algorithm. By 1981, the number of organizations using MRP quickly grew to over 7,000! To this day, this number continues …
Material Flow Analysis (MFA), or Process Flow Analysis, is a fundamental aspect for planning out material process steps. Within the framework of material handling, MFA has the goal of mapping, inspecting and evaluating all flows within an organization. Its focus is to gain a statistical benchmark for a supply chain. For instance, …
Material Handling is one of the most important components in manufacturing. What is it, you may ask? In simple terms, it is defined as moving materials. In manufacturing, the production system set-up is crucial. A plant’s efficiency, productivity, and profitability is dependent on successful material flow. Without it, production would grind …
The College Industry Council on Material Handling Education (CICMHE) of the Material Handling Institute, Inc., has adapted the 10 principles of material handling. The experience of generations of material handling engineers has been summarized here for new and seasoned practitioners. Each of these principles are discussed in the following sections. …
There’s never a good time for an event like the COVID-19 outbreak, but humbly we should all appreciate that it happened after cloud-delivered software solutions became a thing. During these times, the usual list of advantages of cloud-hosted solutions aren’t worth touting, the key advantage to focus on in these …
In the best of times, keeping production flowing is challenging. Those working to ensure the right parts are in the right place at the right time are used to novel surprises causing disruptions, but none of us has seen a bigger surprise than the level of impact from the worldwide COVID-19 …
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