Innovation and Technology

Within the footwear business, Okabashi is unique. The company, based in Buford, Georgia, is not only a family-owned company focused on sustainability, but also, according to the company’s leadership, producing part of the 1% of footwear still made in the United States.

For third-generation shoemaker Sara Irvani, this choice to build a sustainable and successful business in the U.S. was made possible only thanks to constant research and development.

The backstory: Irvani’s family started the company 40 years ago, and it always tried to reduce waste, both for the positive environmental impact as well as to improve its bottom line.

• “By developing closed-loop manufacturing processes, we were able to reuse some of the materials that otherwise might have gone to waste,” said Irvani. “That helped us stay more competitive—and from there we’ve developed innovations in processes and systems and materials that build on that foundation.”

The process: Okabashi’s sustainable processes extend throughout the product lifecycle—from incorporating recycled or biological elements (like soy) that ensure products last longer to preventing disposable waste to recycling post-consumer shoes into new ones.

• “When we look at sustainability of a product, we do it holistically—we look at what it’s made of, where it’s made, how it’s made, the lifecycle, the quality—and we’ve been able to innovate and develop so that our manufacturing process doesn’t create waste,” said Irvani.
• “Without R&D, we would not only be creating the additional cost basis of throwing away all those scraps, but we would also not be able to eliminate waste that is by default landfill or ocean bound.”

The circular economy: In the traditional, linear economic model, inputs go into production, a product reaches a consumer, the consumer uses the product and eventually throws it away. In contrast, Okabashi is working to perfect a circular economic model for its products, said Irvani.

• “If you are designing for circularity, you might use renewable and recycled resources, develop them into that same product with a level of quality that lasts longer, and when the customer is ready to move on, it can be remade into something else,” said Irvani. “That’s how the loop continues. When we talk about circularity, we’re creating that virtuous cycle.”

The homegrown production: Okabashi’s R&D efforts both help it stay in the United States by keeping costs down and require domestic production to work.

• “To remake and recycle a product into something new, you need to have local production,” said Irvani. “You can’t be sending things halfway across the world to be unmade and remade and sent back. That’s why R&D locally and domestically is so important, to help produce circular systems.”

The local benefit: Irvani is quick to point out that money spent on R&D creates significant financial benefits for local communities.

• “There’s a multiplier effect for commercially oriented R&D in terms of the jobs it can create and the impact on the local economy,” said Irvani. “You get a very strong return on investment for both the company and for the community.”

The global perspective: R&D is essential for U.S. companies competing with manufacturers abroad, Irvani added.

• “For U.S. manufacturing broadly, R&D is critical to stay at the forefront of the innovation curve,” said Irvani. “Unless we’re proactively investing and developing new and better ways of doing things, we won’t be globally competitive.”

The last word: “It is imperative industry and retail move toward a circular-based economy,” said Irvani. “That’s not something that just happens or falls from the sky. Consumers are demanding it, and R&D is our pathway to that future.”

What exactly is the industrial metaverse? While the term sounds like something straight out of a science fiction movie, it’s already being used by manufacturers in the here and now. Put simply, the industrial metaverse is a collection of technologies that can create an immersive virtual or virtual/physical industrial environment.

The metaverse will contain virtual replicas of everything from complete factories down to individual components and parts, powered by evolving digital technologies like AI and cloud computing. As the metaverse develops, users will be able to access it from any internet-connected device, such as a smartphone, laptop or tablet, or using virtual reality headsets.

According to a new report released by the Manufacturing Leadership Council, the NAM’s digital transformation division, and Deloitte, 92% of manufacturing executives say they are experimenting with or implementing at least one metaverse-related use case. On average, the surveyed executives say they are running more than six.

How is it used? Manufacturers are using industrial metaverse technologies in four common areas: production, supply chain oversight, customer service and talent management.

• Production: Manufacturers are simulating key processes in order to evaluate them, creating virtual prototypes of processes or systems and creating simulated factories to optimize factory layout and setup.
• Supply chain: Other manufacturers are using the metaverse to track products and raw materials and to collaborate with suppliers.
• Customer service: Companies are also creating virtual showrooms and product demonstrations, which attendees can visit without leaving their own homes or offices.
• Talent management: Lastly, other companies are experiment with using the metaverse for immersive training, virtual plant tours and virtual recruiting and onboarding.

What are the benefits? Executives report that each of these use cases comes with significant benefits, including cost reductions. Respondents also said metaverse applications have improved employee attraction and retention.

• Immersive customer experiences and virtual aftermarket services, such as equipment service and maintenance, have also led to increased revenue, according to the survey.

The challenges: While the industrial metaverse offers many promising benefits, manufacturers are still finding some challenges, including:

• The high cost of metaverse technology and the cybersecurity protections it requires;
• A lack of employees with the right skills, along with the steep learning curve for those who must be trained; and,
• Insufficient digital infrastructure and other resources.

The solution: The report suggests that manufacturers can find success in the metaverse by building a culture of innovation, establishing leadership support and starting small by investing in a digital technology foundation. 

The last word: All in all, manufacturing executives are confident that the industrial metaverse will transform their operations. Learning to understand and use the metaverse will soon be essential for companies seeking a competitive future.

Download the full report, “Exploring the Industrial Metaverse,” to learn more. 

Looking to make the most of the AI computer chips they have, technology companies are increasingly “turning to software that can squeeze more performance out of available chips and help reduce costs,” The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

What’s going on: While larger firms are using hard-to-get graphics processing units to build multiple different AI models that “do things such as detect cybersecurity threats and help improve network performance,” other businesses are using central processing units to do similar tasks.

• CPUs aren’t as powerful as GPUs, but they are easier to find.
• And when “tuned with open-source software tools to get more performance out of them,” CPUs can help businesses meet their processing needs.

Boosting performance: As GPU demand continues to outpace supply, companies are using third-party software to squeeze additional performance from existing GPUs, too.

• One Israeli start-up installs optimization software on client GPUs to “automatically put idle computing power to use to gain better processing efficiency,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
• A Seattle-based startup “is betting that most businesses won’t want to deal with owning and managing an array of AI hardware … so it rents out access to processing power from cloud providers that it speeds up on customers’ behalf.”

Renting the cloud: Indeed, cloud-company giants can offer access to much-needed processing power “by renting it out as they do with computer services,” one source told the Journal.
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Around 15,000 people are diagnosed every year in America with glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer. At Novocure—a global oncology and medical device company with its North American flagship facility located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire—scientists and manufacturers have developed a device to revolutionize the way these tumors are treated.

The breakthrough: Novocure’s founder Yoram Palti developed an innovative treatment called Tumor Treating Fields therapy—an approach that uses electric fields to kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones.

• For adult glioblastoma patients, the device, called Optune^®, consists of wearable, portable adhesive arrays and an electric generator that can be carried in a bag.

• “Unhealthy cells and healthy cells have different properties,” said Frank Leonard, president, CNS Cancers U.S. at Novocure. “If you can create the right type of electric field, you can exert force and destroy cancer cells as they divide.”

Value added: Crucially, Tumor Treating Fields therapy is being studied together with other therapies, giving patients access to an optimal mix of treatments.

• “You get the best of both worlds with a device intervention and a drug intervention,” said Leonard. “Patients can wear this device consistently while using Temozolomide, which is the current standard of care chemotherapy agent used to treat glioblastoma.”

Low risk: Unlike drug therapies, which can present a range of adverse effects, Optune^® has few side effects beyond mild-to-moderate skin irritation beneath the transducer arrays. As a result, patients can receive the treatment continuously for extended periods of time to attack cancer cells.

• “Typically, the limiting factor in treating cancer is dose-limiting toxicity—for example, you can only take one or two chemotherapies at the same time because they’re so toxic,” said Leonard.

Getting heard: The company’s device was featured in the award-winning short film “Rare Enough,” which tells the inspiring story of cancer survivor DJ Stewart and his journey in battling glioblastoma.

• Stewart is a Kansas City–based skateboarder who was first diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2019. Thanks, in part, to Tumor Treating Fields therapy, his life expectancy—once only 13 months—has been prolonged significantly. DJ now serves as a community outreach coordinator for the Head for the Cure Foundation.

Next steps: Novocure believes that Tumor Treating Fields therapy holds significant promise for other types of cancer as well. The company is developing additional wearable devices that could treat countless patients around the world.

• Lung cancer trials have shown promising results recently, and the company expects to learn more in the coming months from clinical trials involving ovarian cancer, metastases from lung cancer and pancreatic cancer.

• “We started working first in one of the rarer, yet most aggressive, forms of cancer. There are around 15,000 patients diagnosed with glioblastoma in the U.S. each year,” said Leonard. “But pre-clinical data suggests that Tumor Treating Fields can work with all different tumor types.”

A look to the future: Wearable anti-cancer devices offer an exciting new frontier in the fight against life-threatening diseases, and an important field where manufacturers can make an enormous difference.

• “In these really aggressive cancers, we still are making advances—and advanced devices that require sophisticated engineering and complex global manufacturing have a role to play,” said Leonard. “There’s a lot the manufacturing industry can do to improve the outcomes of patients, and they should be recognized for that work.”

Real estate companies are turning to artificial intelligence to help cut emissions from commercial buildings, according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription).

What’s going on: While developers and builders have begun using more energy-efficient design and building methods in recent decades, and governments are introducing stricter energy-use codes for commercial spaces, “more than 80% of buildings don’t have smart systems to efficiently manage their energy use.”

• Commercial real estate manager JLL “has been making a string of investments to bring AI systems to companies looking to cut their emissions. … JLL says it expects 56% of organizations to pay a premium for sustainable spaces by 2025.”
• One of its investments is in a firm that installs electric motors and small computers into building systems to better control heating and cooling.

Why it’s important: “AI building systems learn from historical patterns and the daily habits of occupants to predict and power things on and off.”

• “For instance, software and hardware that automatically manages lights, heating and cooling can help buildings cut 20% or more of their yearly energy use.”

A caveat: Just 10–15% of buildings have systems in place to collect the data needed to make these predictions.

• As one source told the Journal, “Bad data means you can’t do any kind of schedules, rules or more sophisticated use cases around artificial intelligence. You have to have the data.”

Check it out: Speaking of data collection, the Manufacturing Leadership Council (the NAM’s digital transformation division) is hosting an event in December that will help manufacturers envision what a data-driven industry might look like by 2030. Learn more and register here.

Supply chain problems, PALIoT Solutions is coming for you.

This fall, the New-York-state-based startup, whose name derives from a combination of “pallet” and “IoT,” will begin production of its smart shipping pallets. According to company leaders, these products will do nothing less than revolutionize the way food and goods are transported. 

From vision to reality: PALIoT cofounders Paul Barry and Richard MacDonald envisioned pallets “whose positive impact on the environment keeps increasing as more of them are manufactured and deployed,” according to the firm’s website.

• To accomplish this feat, the pallets had to be both far lighter and more durable than typical pallets, which are made of wood and nails.
• After significant research and development, Barry and MacDonald came up with the solution: a polyurea-coated, engineered-plywood pallet that was 20 pounds lighter than its traditional peers and contained a proprietary sensor capable of instant communication with the cloud, making inventory tracking a cinch.

The “secret sauce”: “The ‘secret sauce’ is essentially a smart mesh network,” said Barry, who hails from Ireland and has an electrical engineering and investment banking background. “The PALIoT pallets in a shipment will all talk to each other, say, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ And [after shipping,] because they know they’ve been on a truck, they know they have to report all that valuable inventory and environmental data back to the cloud.”

• PALIoT, which will rent its pallets to customers using a per-pallet, pooling model (with an optional subscription service), acquired exclusive global use of the mist® Mesh Networking protocol. This ensures that communication is highly secure and battery sensitive at all times.
• The company estimates it will initially produce between 650,000 and 700,000 pallets a year in the first phase of the launch.

Savings for all: PALIoT’s groundbreaking sensors promise to save buyers both resources and money.

• “Food producers see tens of millions of dollars a year in food waste,” Barry said. With PALIoT technology, those producers will be able to track their perishable food shipments’ temperature and humidity conditions, viewing that information in the cloud so handlers can take swift action to cut down on spoilage.
• And because real-time asset protection is a PALIoT priority, the pallets will help companies cut down on theft and losses. As Barry put it, “If a pallet gets stolen, we will know where and when.”

A “smart” solution: Typical asset-embedded IoT sensors fail long before the assets themselves, making them impractical for longer-term use. Not so with PALIoT’s pallets, which can be used for a decade before they will need to be “retired and recycled,” according to Barry. 

• “How can you justify having an expensive piece of hardware with a battery that needs replacing every few years?” he continued. “Using a combination of communications technologies, we’ve been able to solve the key problems of battery life and cost for large-scale asset-pooling companies.”

What’s next: Having recently relocated its manufacturing operations from Colorado to just outside Rochester, New York, PALIoT has its sights set on doing business with the dairy farms of the Northeast. It also plans to expand its manufacturing footprint across the U.S.

• “Demand is not the issue,” Barry told us. ”People just want a better solution, and we think this is it.”

Supply chain problems, PALIoT Solutions is coming for you.

This fall, the New-York-state-based startup, whose name derives from a combination of “pallet” and “IoT,” will begin production of its smart shipping pallets. According to company leaders, these products will do nothing less than revolutionize the way food and goods are transported.

From vision to reality: PALIoT cofounders Paul Barry and Richard MacDonald envisioned pallets “whose positive impact on the environment keeps increasing as more of them are manufactured and deployed,” according to the firm’s website.

• To accomplish this feat, the pallets had to be both far lighter and more durable than typical pallets, which are made of wood and nails.
• After significant research and development, Barry and MacDonald came up with the solution: a polyurea-coated, engineered-plywood pallet that was 20 pounds lighter than its traditional peers and contained a proprietary sensor capable of instant communication with the cloud, making inventory tracking a cinch.

The “secret sauce”: “The ‘secret sauce’ is essentially a smart mesh network,” said Barry, who hails from Ireland and has an electrical engineering and investment banking background. “The PALIoT pallets in a shipment will all talk to each other, say, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ And [after shipping,] because they know they’ve been on a truck, they know they have to report all that valuable inventory and environmental data back to the cloud.”

• PALIoT, which will rent its pallets to customers using a per-pallet, pooling model (with an optional subscription service), acquired exclusive global use of the mist® Mesh Networking protocol. This ensures that communication is highly secure and battery sensitive at all times.
• The company estimates it will initially produce between 650,000 and 700,000 pallets a year in the first phase of the launch.

Read the full story here.
 

After a global pandemic and amid considerable economic strain, worker morale may not be everything a company hopes. So what can leaders do to boost communication and restore a sense of excitement and purpose?

The Innovation Research Interchange—the NAM’s innovation division—recently published a whitepaper on morale building, drawing on copious existing research as well as consultations with leaders in a range of industries (from aerospace to consumer goods). Here are some of its key recommendations.

Senior leaders in the trenches: The best way to understand company morale (or its absence) is to go looking for it. In one notable case, FM Global Chief Science Officer Lou Gritzo spent a day working in each company lab, so he could understand where communication and cooperation needed improvement.

• Thanks to this experiment, Gritzo was able to “open lines of communication up and down the organization,” according to the IRI, leading to both an improved flow of information and greater comfort among lab staff in making independent decisions.
• “For others looking to try their hand at being a (not so) undercover boss, [Gritzo] recommends setting out rules of the road in advance,” the IRI paper notes. “The goal is to create a dialogue, not make guarantees that things will change. The change comes from the relationships built.”

Support for midlevel managers: Many participants in the IRI’s roundtables and interviews agreed that midlevel managers have only become more crucial in recent years—which explains why these managers are often very stressed.

• Amid the pressures of the pandemic, companies began offering more support and coaching for middle managers, according to earlier IRI research.
• One organization studied by the IRI and its research partner, Babson College, brought in coaches to work with managers—but not just for one-off sessions. “The external coaches were brought in multiple times during a one-year period in order to observe leadership styles and gave feedback openly,” which led to improved communication and greater autonomy among the managers.

Everyone an innovator: Another way to boost morale is to make sure great ideas are always recognized, no matter who comes up with them.

• At ICL Group, leaders devised a novel way to encourage innovative thinking: “an online platform that allowed anyone at ICL Group to propose an idea, have it reviewed by management, voted on by frontline staff and assigned to the appropriate team for implementation.”
• The platform has proved very popular, according to one senior leader, who said, “Everybody has just been blown away by how many ideas people have entered and [how many employees] continue to do it.”

Read the whole thing: Check out many more useful details and expert advice in the full whitepaper, which you can find here.

Flashback to 2015: “Hamilton” debuted on Broadway, millennials surpassed baby boomers as the largest U.S. generation and the term “Industry 4.0” was gaining traction in manufacturing circles. It was also when the Manufacturing Leadership Council created a conceptual framework called “Manufacturing 4.0.”

So what is the difference between Industry 4.0 and Manufacturing 4.0? While the terms may not sound all that distinct from each other, Manufacturing 4.0 represents the MLC’s commitment to a far-sighted, holistic approach to manufacturing’s tech-enabled metamorphosis—one that has served it well in over the past eight years.

The background: The 4.0 movement started in Germany in 2011 when the German ministries for education, research, economic affairs and energy developed a strategic initiative that would push forward the digital transformation of industrial manufacturing.

• They named this initiative Industrie 4.0. It featured an action plan that combined policy initiatives, public–private funding, strategies for technology implementation and the identification of business drivers and barriers.

The difference: For the MLC and its members, Manufacturing 4.0 is made up of transformations in three different arenas: technology, organization and leadership.

• Contrast this with Industry 4.0, which covers only technology topics—specifically nine pillars of technological innovation, which include autonomous robots, big data, cloud computing, IoT, cybersecurity, systems integration, simulation, AR/VR and additive manufacturing.
• “MLC, of course, covers all of these technologies, but, importantly, adds the dimensions of organizational and leadership change as part of its perspective on manufacturing’s digital transformation,” says David R. Brousell, the MLC’s founder, vice president and executive director.

MLC in action: While the MLC does provide member resources that focus on specific technologies and their uses in manufacturing operations, it also covers topics such as how leaders can prepare their workforce for digital transformation, how organizations should be structured to make business decisions based on manufacturing data and how leaders can ensure they set their teams up for digital success.

• Additionally, the annual Manufacturing Leadership Awards recognize not only high-performing digital manufacturing projects but also outstanding individuals who demonstrate both technological understanding and strong personal leadership.

M4.0’s continued evolution: Today, the MLC continues to use Manufacturing 4.0 as the overarching framework for its member companies’ activities.

• Its influence is apparent in the MLC’s annual Critical Issues Agenda, a member-created list of key business drivers and enablers of digital manufacturing.
• The agenda covers technological advances like smart factories and data analytics, alongside the organizational ecosystems that put such advances into operation—from the leaders who direct them to the cultures that make them succeed.

The Future of M4.0: As the MLC gets ready to set its 2023–2024 Critical Issues Agenda, it will continue to take a holistic approach to the technological changes sweeping the industry by recognizing the importance of people in making those transformations happen.

Go deeper: You can learn more about Manufacturing 4.0 by downloading the MLC’s white paper, Manufacturing in 2030: The Next Phase of Digital Evolution; reading a recent report, The Future of Industrial AI in Manufacturing; or attending its Aug. 30 virtual Executive Interview, Shifting from Disruption to Growth.

With one of its key components—printed circuit boards—in short supply, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories chose the proactive solution: it would begin making them itself. Now that its new factory is up and running, SEL is receiving unexpectedly keen interest from other companies, and considering ramping up production for outside sales.

Fixing a supply chain problem: The Pullman, Washington–based electric power system protection solution manufacturer began manufacturing PCBs at its new $100 million, 162,000-square-foot factory in Moscow, Idaho, back in March.

• “Printed circuit boards take electronic components and interconnect them so they can interact with each other,” SEL CEO David Whitehead said. “Without them, you can forget about AI, forget about your cell phones—they’re in just about any electronic device.”
• The Moscow factory is running at about 25% capacity. When it reaches full production later this year, it will be one of the top PCB manufacturers in the U.S., according to Whitehead.

Domestic and accessible: The PCB “is a critical component that goes into our devices,” Whitehead continued. “Now, instead of sourcing PCBs from around the U.S., we can produce them ourselves.”

• The Moscow facility—which only produces the circuit boards for SEL—has increased the company’s supply chain resiliency and sped up its output, Whitehead told us. “Now, in a handful of days after designing a printed circuit board for a product, our engineers are in their labs testing it. It’s a big win for us.”
• Nearly half of manufacturers in the U.S.—44.9%—cite supply chain hurdles as one of their top business challenges, according to the NAM’s Q2 2023 Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey.

Self-funded and viable: SEL funded 100% of the facility’s construction costs, and it will have paid for itself in two to three years, Whitehead said.

• “I think that’s really a big deal for not only taxpayers but the local community generally,” he said. State and local governments “can take the funds [they didn’t use on us] and invest” elsewhere.

A good neighbor: The Moscow plant—which features a fume scrubber system that exceeds Environmental Protection Agency standards for volatile organic compounds—also uses a “zero-liquid discharge water treatment system that recycles and reuses all the water used to manufacture the printed circuit boards,” Whitehead said.

• A comparable factory would use about 90,000 gallons of water each day of production, while SEL uses about 500 to 600 gallons—the equivalent of only a few households’ daily usage, according to Whitehead. Most of that is for worker needs (drinking water and restrooms).
• The company also reclaims and reuses metals, such as tin, silver and gold, that are used in the production process.
• “We are very environmentally conscious about how we produce these boards,” Whitehead said. 

What’s next? Since the facility began production, SEL has gotten numerous inquiries from other manufacturers interested in buying the PCBs. The company is likely to oblige them soon.

• “This is our next opportunity,” Whitehead said of producing boards for other manufacturers. “We love being vertically integrated, building as much as we can close to where we’re going to use the products. … As we get better at it for our own consumption, I can see us expanding it.”