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Finding the Right Data Visualization Tool for Your Business

At its core, data visualization is based on a strikingly simple proposition -- it’s easier to see connections, relationships, and trends when they’re graphically displayed than it is to stare at a...

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How to Get Your IT Staff Ready for the Industrial Internet

As more businesses get ready to embrace the Industrial Internet, a question arises as to whether their IT staffs are prepared to tackle the challenge. Furthermore, what IT resources do manufacturers...

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How to Calculate the ROI for Data Visualization Tools

Nailing down the return on investment (ROI) for a data visualization initiative is difficult. The key is to view these tools in terms of the business benefit, business productivity, and IT efficiency.

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New Framework Provides Transparent Carbon Tracking for Data Centers

Data centers consume 2 percent of the world's energy. A global consortium of IT organizations called the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) is promoting an open and standard approach for measuring the...

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Digital Factories Will Need New Kinds of Workers

The growth of additive manufacturing, remote diagnostics, and data-gathering "smart products" will have a profound impact on manufacturing as we know it, according to experts.

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Peering Inside Industrial Processes with Google Glass

Google Glass could become ubiquitous in corporate corridors, but it’s also likely to become a familiar sight on shop floors, near assembly lines, in labs, and on loading docks. One app currently in...

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Enterprise Resource Planning: Better On-Premise or Cloud-based?

The majority of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are installed on-premises and maintained by in-house IT personnel. However, ERP solutions are increasingly being offered in the cloud, and...

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Even Small Manufacturers Need Robust Cybersecurity

Once upon a time, manufacturers didn’t worry very much about the security of their machinery and processes beyond simply locking the doors. Today, of course, more and more equipment is networked to...

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Spotlight: Brian Courtney, GE, on Industrial Internet’s Big Data...

GE's Brian Courtney is a bit like an explorer in the newly discovered, uncharted territory of industrial Big Data. After all, what engineer wouldn't want to know what was happening with every piece of...

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To Our Readers: Happy Holidays from ThomasNet News

The holidays are a time to consider all that we’re thankful for, and you are on our list.

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Test 435

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Labor Optimization Solutions Make Best Use of Human Capital

In the past decade, manufacturers have adopted software to manage many processes, from supply chain management to enterprise resource planning to power consumption. But when it comes to the largest...

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Breaking Bad (Big Data)

Manufacturers are diving into Big Data to sharpen their decision-making. However, they are getting subpar results from being unable to break down the organizational silos that undermine their efforts...

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Will the Next Generation of Robots Be Googled?

Eight recent company acquisitions by Google Inc. point to an intriguing conclusion: The tech giant wants to help direct the course of industrial robotics into an agile and ultra-intelligent future.

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BYOD on the Factory Floor

Bring-your-own-device is proliferating among floor personnel in factories, allowing them to monitor manufacturing processes on their personal devices. But with convenience and greater productivity...

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Manufacturing Innovation Hubs to Take U.S. Into Future

A series of manufacturing research hubs that the Obama administration wants to establish aims to speed the development of advanced, cutting-edge manufacturing and automation technologies and production...

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Love Your MOM: Before Your Software and System Integration, Love Your People

It is obviously incumbent to have good software and system integration for good manufacturing operations management. But the best manufacturers at MOM are driven by staff who execute continuous...

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M2M Communication Is Prelude to "Smart" Manufacturing Systems

Manufacturers are already starting to take advantage of machine-to-machine communications, using gathered data analytics for predictive machine maintenance. The eventual pinnacle is completely...

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Companies Want to Get Social in their Enterprise Collaboration

Collaboration technologies are allowing employees to communicate in real time and work together more easily across enterprises of all sizes. But research suggests that many companies are lagging behind...

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Inventory Optimization Helps Straddle the Line Between Shortage and Excess

Distribution and supply managers are always worried about both inventory carrying costs and stock shortages. Increasingly complex manufacturing supply chains, though, are calling for a balanced...

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Open Networking Promises to Set IT Managers Loose, Spur Innovation

Software-defined networking is unlocking networking functionality from hardware and devices to enable managers and architects to deploy routing and switching of their own will and write their own...

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Persistent Security Threats Push Organizations to Continuous Vulnerability...

Vulnerability management is a fact of life for business organizations. Companies have to monitor the behavior of its people, but cloud computing and mobile devices are introducing threats that need to...

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Model-Based Systems Engineering: Beyond Spreadsheets

The growing complexity of subsystems within products will spur evolution from document-based systems engineering to the model-based approach. MBSE software will ease integrated, concurrent development...

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Technologies Are Providing Real-Time Supply Chain Visibility, but What's Next?

Businesses are starting to take advantage of real-time logistics visibility, such as traffic avoidance and delivery resequencing. But that's the tip of the iceberg of possibilities being dreamed by the...

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Manufacturing Innovation Institute Will Build "Digital Commons"

The first project of the recently unveiled Digital Manufacturing Design and Innovation Institute is the creation of the Digital Manufacturing Commons. It is an open-source collaboration tool that will...

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GM Pursues IT Insourcing for Better Alignment, Economics

General Motors is nearing completion of its groundbreaking effort to bring its U.S. IT resources in-house, in an initiative that is expected to reduce costs and bring IT operations in closer alignment...

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New Complexities in Enterprise IT Call for Context-Aware Security

A new generation of firewalls, web security gateways, and intrusion-detection and intrusion-prevention systems that include contextual capabilities is coming onto the market. Simply put, they are able...

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Collaboration Network Solves Problems in Shop-Floor Integration

Okuma, a CNC machinery maker, established Partners in THINC to include competing suppliers of shop-floor productivity solutions. This seemingly unconventional move spurs open-platform development while...

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Manufacturing Finds Its Way Into the Cloud

Manufacturers, after dabbling in management and finance applications in the cloud, are now becoming more comfortable getting off-premise with manufacturing operations IT.

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Analytics Technologies Drive Transformation in Workforce Management

Experts are saying Big Data and predictive analytics will be game-changing for human resources professionals looking to become more strategic for their organizations. New tools are allowing them to...

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Going the Distance: Solving 'Last-Meter' Connectivity on the Shop Floor

Getting data from manufacturing machinery and tying it to enterprise systems allows organizations to get production insights. Doing this for disparate, legacy machines has been a conundrum, but the...

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AT&T Gets On Next-Generation IT Infrastructure

AT&T's announcement of a move to cloud-based architecture for its network underscores the emergence of so-called NGI, or next-generation IT infrastructure, which encompasses open-source...

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Industrial Energy Management Drills Down to the Core

Core capital equipment, that is. Industry experts say smart meters and dedicated software provide the fine-grained resolution needed to correlate energy use with particular machinery and product...

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Successful Software Selection: Do Your Due Diligence

Small and medium-sized businesses were most satisfied with their software-selection projects when conducted with basic due diligence rather than the kinds of complex analyses often employed by IT...

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Quality/Regulatory Document Management: What You Need to Know

Organizations operating under stringent regulatory compliance and quality management require air-tight document management solutions. Anything less and companies suffer inefficiencies, redundancies,...

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Strategic Meter Deployment Powers Shop-Floor Energy Management

The push in data-driven manufacturing can extend to energy metering. Electricity meters positioned on the shop floor are realizing cost benefits.

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Next-Gen Financial Analytics Drive Manufacturing Into Profitability

Data-driven manufacturing is generally being linked with equipment effectiveness, but it can also show a company whether what it is making is making money. It comes down to profit per hour.

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Manufacturers Use Product Traceability to Ward Off Quality Issues

Technology-enabled product tracking and tracing capabilities are becoming must-haves as supply chains have grown more and more complex. They help protect manufacturers and minimize risk impact.

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Closed-Loop Quality: Not Your Father's Quality Control

Enterprise-wide quality software, handling centralized data collection, document management, and customer issues, among other functions, is redefining manufacturing quality.

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Destroying the Silos of Quality Management

Enterprise quality management systems connect the usually isolated four major functional areas of an organization -- R&D, manufacturing, suppliers, and service -- to provide visibility for managing...

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Next-Generation Firewalls Fend Off Newer Breed of Threats

Operating connected systems and networked infrastructure with so-called advanced persistent threats, such as cyber-espionage organizations, always looming has meant the need for advanced firewalls that...

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Are Your Part Numbers Too Smart for Their Own Good?

Intelligent part numbers, containing identifiable descriptors, have helped manufacturers speed up their work. Ironically, they now could be an archaic drag on productivity in today's environment of...

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Manufacturers Slow to Adopt Smart Building Systems Despite Benefits

Manufacturers don't usually focus on efficiency improvements other than at their machinery, work-cell, or production-line levels hence their lack of uptake in smart building systems. But they can still...

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The Main Barrier to Developing a Common Management System

There are similarities between management standards, such as the corrective and preventive action (CAPA) process for environmental, health, and safety and that for quality. So why aren't more companies...

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Wearable Technologies Can Make Manufacturing an Immersive Hyper-experience

From detailed, hands-free machine diagnostic walk-throughs to capturing real-time, in-cycle machine data, digital manufacturing is hinging on wearable technology tools like Google Glass. The...

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How Wearable Technologies Can Transform Field Service and Maintenance

Hands-free devices like smartglasses can significantly lift field technicians' ergonomics and access to machine schematics and information. And remote maintenance supervisors can be patched into the...

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How the Internet of Things Is Transforming the Value Chain

Companies’ efforts around connected machines and the Internet of Things (IoT) are starting to achieve efficiencies and financial returns. IoT is only scratching the surface, and much greater benefits...

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New Chips Are Bringing Factory Automation into New Era

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How the Internet of Things Will Turn Manufacturers Into Service Providers

Innovation experts say IoT lets manufacturers extend their customer reach with new revenue opportunities as it transforms them from transactional to longer-term solutions support business models.

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Product Life-Cycle Management Market in a Period of 'Digestion'

After a few "extreme-growth" years, the global PLM market has cooled. The lackluster worldwide economy has led to cautious IT investment, and users that have made significant PLM investments are...

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