Globalisation leads manufacturing innovation

Manufacturing has undergone startling changes over the last 20 years. Today, innovation is being driven by a world suddenly grown smaller, where the ability to access and influence technology is available to a wider range of individuals, across a growing number of industrialising nations, writes IndustryWeek.

According to Cliff Waldman, an economist with the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI who co-authored a paper on innovation in the manufacturing sector, globalisation is the single biggest driver of innovation today.

Technology isn't just reaching a wider audience of users; it's also getting smarter - especially on the factory floor. According to Sujeet Chand, senior vice-president for advanced technology and chief technology officer for Rockwell Automation, a smarter device implies a technology that holds a capacity for processing and communications.

Rockwell Automation, a global company focused on manufacturing industrial automation and information products, is reportedly making efforts to make its customers more productive and the world more sustainable, says TMCnet.

In a release, Keith Nosbusch, Rockwell Automation chairman and CEO, said he sees plant-wide optimisation representing a new era in manufacturing. He believes companies making the investment will be able to address new sustainability objectives in a better manner and quickly respond to changes in consumer demand.

Company officials said manufacturers are being driven by a changing global economy to search new continuous improvement methodologies. Their efforts are supported by the convergence of industrial automation and IT.

A new company spun out of the University of Texas Pan-American could revolutionise the production of nanofibres, according to The Engineer.

Using a new concept called ForceSpinning technology invented by UTPA mechanical engineering professors, Drs Karen Lozano and Kamal Sarkar, FibeRio Technology plans to develop and manufacture machinery that employs centrifugal force - rather than the more costly, current electrospinning technology - to create the nanofibres from a variety of materials.

It is projected that between now and 2014 the new company could generate gross revenues of more than $234 million and net a total of nearly $84 million.