US manufacturing tech sales up 28%

March manufacturing technology consumption in the US totalled $351.65 million, according to AMTDA, the American Machine Tool Distributors` Association and the Association For Manufacturing Technology.

The recently-released figures are available at ReliablePlant.com.

This total, as reported by companies participating in the US manufacturing technology consumption programme, was up 27.8% from February and up 28.1% from the total of $274.57 million reported for March 2005.

"US manufacturing companies continue to invest in new machine tool technology to further improve their manufacturing productivity to keep pace with economic growth," says AMTDA president John J Healy.

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IBM and Dassault Systems say the manufacturing software CATIA V5 played a crucial role in increasing product development efficiency on the Ford Fusion programme at Ford Motor Company.

CATIA V5, supporting collaborative virtual product development, was used on the Body-in-White (BIW) development of the Ford Fusion, helping Ford reduce its overall digital development time, writes Manufacturing Business Technology.

"CATIA`s ability to quickly adapt a design for other vehicles on the same platform is critical to making gains in the product development process, and is directly contributing to Ford`s goal of driving cost out of the system and ensuring quality," says Joel Lemke, president of Dassault.

A sensor technology road show in the UK will display the latest sensor technology. Throughout June and July 2006, the Pepperl+Fuchs mobile exhibition truck will be on a UK tour offering visitors the opportunity to Pepperl+Fuchs technology.

This is according to Manufacturing Talk, which writes that the latest sensor technology, including position indication systems, laser distance measurement, safety light curtains, 1D and 2D data matrix readers, RFID systems, inductive and photoelectric sensors, and rotary encoders, will be on show.