Hi and welcome to another edition of the News-In-Review!
On the eve of President-elect Trump’s inauguration, dozens of companies are announcing that they are keeping manufacturing jobs in the US, creating them, or bringing it back: Ford, Alibaba, and Amazon among them. In fact, this is a long term trend: We highlighted a FastCompany article that revealed that apparel manufacturing in the US went up by 35% since 2009. But why? It’s not because customers are expecting improved personalization options (they’re not really), and it doesn’t seem to be about taking advantage of new technologies such as 3D printing. Instead, we think it’s the need to stay agile to consumer needs, and that’s best done by empowering your operators with the new opportunities cloud+data provide. Read our CEO’s latest LinkedIn post below and find out more.
The Uneasy Truth Behind Amazon’s Hiring Blitz And What Startups Are Doing To Fix It
Today, Amazon announced that it will create 100,000 full-time, full-benefit jobs in the United States over the next 18 months. The jobs, Amazon says, will range from entry-level positions to software development roles. The announcement is designed to play nicely into President-elect Trump’s rhetoric about bringing more jobs back to our shores, but it’s important to remember that Amazon’s business model is premised on increasing automation wherever possible, which means replacing more and more humans with machines.
Read the full article at FastCompany.
The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of the world’s most revolutionary phone
In a very personal and thorough recollection of the bold project of modular phone Ara we get a glimpse into how AM was scrapped from the manufacturing plans. “[Paul] Eremenko cut ties with one of Ara’s earliest supporters, 3DSystems, scrapping the project’s dependence on rapid 3D printing for a dye sublimation process. 3DSystems’ printers were too slow, and the new system could adorn modules with selfies and pets.”
Read the full story here.
Trust your People.
People who run manufacturing, sales, logistics or many other core functions in supply chain know how important their team members are: How much they know, how many ideas they have to drive more efficient operations – yet how they have long been stifled by rules, ignored by managers and brushed aside by support staff. No wonder people become demoralised. Modern software tools should be providing relief. Alas, the most recent industrial IoT examples such as GE’s Predix show that this trend looks set to continue. Data Scientists lead IoT projects that get the data to tell them where the problems are rather than asking the people on the front line what stops them from being better at their job. Their findings are enshrined in IT systems as rules not to be tampered with. IIoT is the buzzword, but we are not sure that people are looking at it the right way.
Read the full article on LinkedIn.
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