The Covid-19 situation is terrible in so many ways. The loss of life, freedom, and the incredible amount of debt being accrued to name a few. One positive thing about it, however, is that awareness has sharply risen on the importance of having local manufacturing and supply chains. This represents a historic opportunity to re-align some of our national priorities around … [Read more...]
Data is Currency: Preparing for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Neural Networks
Lurking somewhere in your computer systems is data that in the future will be able to improve awareness, efficiency, and profitability at your company. This is possible by allowing you to more readily adapt data hungry technologies such as AI, machine learning and neural networks.((The more data you have, the more accurate and useful these technologies are)) You've already made … [Read more...]
CIMCO Tech Tip – Connecting Excel to the CIMCO Database using ODBC
CIMCO Manufacturing Data Management does a great job of storing and controlling all of your manufacturing data. CIMCO Machine Data Collection does a great job tracking all of your machine metrics. They both also include a complete report system that can be customized and accessed via their respective clients. As is often the case, sometimes you may want to include some of this … [Read more...]
Traceability Using CIMCO Software
One way to help digitally transform manufacturing companies is to implement enhanced traceability. This can be useful to ensure that required tolerances and procedures have been followed, as well as provide additional data related to the manufacture of a given component or product. For example a company may need to provide documentation to show that a part was within all … [Read more...]
Advanced IoT Keurig Coffee Machine Data Collection
Prior to this year, it had been 6 years since Managed Solutions participated at the Westec show. While keeping up with the expanding needs of our customers, the task of preparing for Westec was growing in urgency. Two ideas were percolating here: to be more personal/welcoming and to feature something different. In order to capture our desired culture we settled on the "Westec … [Read more...]
Sacramento Area Manufacturers Mobilize to Ensure Bright Future
In June of last year we shared some examples of manufacturer led initiatives that are working to tackle the biggest challenges they face. The challenges are predominantly the skills gap and workforce development issues. Now it is 2019, and have an update for you. In an Email update from SVMI executive director Dean Peckham to supporters and manufacturers Dean laid out the … [Read more...]
CIMCO Tech Tip – Adding Percent handling to a Standard Serial Port
Today we will be looking at the procedure for adding the ability to handle “%” signs to a standard serial port. This will allow us to run programs that do not have percent signs on machines that require them at the beginning and end of programs without editing the program. Let’s say for instance that we have a machine down and need to run production on another machine. We don’t … [Read more...]
Paint your old Machines White
Have you ever driven by an old building with numerous broken windows? Broken window theory suggests if you do not repair a single broken pane that many others will end up with a similar fate. This psychology and it's impact on other things was indirectly touched on by Julien Verhille, an Operations/Lean Manufacturing manager in France in a recent LinkedIn post: Not everybody … [Read more...]
CIMCO MDM and Mastercam Integration Pt. 2
Dynamic Lists and Import Features. In part 1 of this series, we went over setting up the MDM configuration, copying the chooks over, and customizing the ribbon in Mastercam to add the CIMCO buttons to it. As promised in the first article we'll cover the setup of the dynamic tool list and the actual process of performing the exchange between MDM and Mastercam. Setting up … [Read more...]
CIMCO MDC Andon Solution
Have you thought about Implementing an Andon station on your shop floor? Do you have CIMCO MDC-Max running in your shop already? If you answered yes to either of these questions then it is easier to deploy than you think. What is Andon? Before we look at how, let's take a brief look at what Andon means in manufacturing. Wikipedia defines Andon as: A manufacturing term … [Read more...]