AGMA has a full set of education courses for 2021 including our first class of the year, Reverse Engineering, which will be held on January 28. And AGMA still offers many pre-recorded courses that are online for your convenience. Additionally, click here to see what is available in the very popular Workforce Training Series. Start your learning journey today and make 2021 the year that you are ALL IN too! 

Forbes
The trends that were already underway in manufacturing—including digital manufacturing, software for blue-collar workers, 3D printing at scale, and robotics and automation—accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. Here are seven of Forbes' favorite stories from 2020.

NBC Sports
The space industry has become a solid launch platform for Brad Kaselowski to achieve liftoff with his state-of-the-art 3D printing company. Since Kaselowski Advanced Manufacturing opened two years ago, its owner has been reticent about the business in which he invested millions. The hybrid manufacturing factory, housed in the 70,000-square-foot-shop that once was the base of Keselowski’s truck team, assists companies by bending and forming metal into parts.

Gear Solutions
The presented investigations show the real flank geometry of bevel and hypoid gears can be mapped by the virtual cylindrical gear geometry according to ISO 10300-1 in a sufficiently accurate way.

3D Printing Industry
The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) has announced plans to build a 51,250 square foot Center for Manufacturing Advancement (CMA) on its campus. Projected to open in 2022, the $25.5M CMA will be funded by the Danville Regional Foundation and the State of Virginia, and is currently being built with the help of Virginia’s Division of Engineering and Buildings. The facility is ultimately intended to support manufacturing companies operating and expanding in the Southern Virginia area, while enhancing the region’s manufacturing competitiveness, including via 3D printing readiness.

New Atlas
Auto shows may have screeched to a sudden halt in 2020, but that hasn’t stopped design teams from cutting loose with an array of futuristic four-wheeled creations. While most are much closer to the drawing board than the production line, they do give shape to some of the technologies we could see emerging over the coming decade … as well as some we definitely won’t.

Reuters
South Korea-based LG Electronics Inc. and automotive supplier Magna International Inc. are launching a joint venture that will make key components for electric cars, the companies announced. The joint venture tentatively called LG Magna e-Powertrain and valued at $1 billion, will manufacture e-motors, inverters and onboard chargers, according to LG Electronics.

IHS Markit press release
Canadian manufacturers registered a survey-record overall improvement in business conditions during December. Sharp expansions in new orders and output underpinned the latest growth. Sustained increases in manufacturing workloads contributed to capacity pressures and another round of job creation.

The 2021 AGMA Fall Technical Meeting will be held November 1-3, 2021, in Rosemont, IL. Each year for this event, authors are selected by a peer-reviewed process. Authors interested in submitting for this year’s event must have their abstracts in by January 15. Complete information is available by the link below.

IHS Markit press release
December PMI™ data from IHS Markit signaled a marked improvement in operating conditions across the U.S. manufacturing sector. The upturn was the sharpest since September 2014. Although supported by further substantial increases in output and new orders, the headline figure was pushed higher by severe supply chain disruption.

Today’s Motor Vehicles
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all parts of vehicle development, manufacturing and sales. Automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are rethinking how they design, develop, test, build, sell, and service vehicles to protect the health and safety of employees, customers and communities. Office buildings, factories, testing, certification, and homologation facilities have been closed or reorganized to support physical separation between employees. This creates significant challenges throughout vehicle development and production.

Industrial Machinery Digest
“You must be diversified enough to survive bad times, so that skill and good process can have the chance to pay of fin the long-term,” said American academic and investor Joel Greenblatt. This is certainly true for companies that are embracing diversification to overcome the uncertainties of COVID-19, while other manufacturers are falling behind. Here, Claudia Jarrett, U.S. country manager at automation parts supplier EU Automation, explains how software is giving some businesses the edge. 

Harvard Business Review
While work will likely never go back to the pre-pandemic status quo, the future will be a blended one that leverages the best of what both virtual and face-to-face can offer. The authors argue that collaboration, innovation, acculturation and dedication are difficult to replicate virtually and sustain without some face-to-fact interaction. But to design in person environments that will be successful in the future, they say, you must create an immersive experience that incorporates elements like purposeful focus, interpersonal bonding, deep learning, unencumbered experimentation, and structured serendipity.

Flight Global
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has for the first time issued greenhouse gas (GHG) standards for new aircraft which, it argues, will ensure “international consistency” and give US manufacturers a “level playing field” with foreign competitors.

Manufacturing Global
Richard Seel, Managing Director, Delaware UK explains how new virtual reality technology is set to revolutionize the factory and warehouse environments.

Automation.com
Across all regions of the U.S., the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is here to stay. Many heavy industry companies are accelerating their adoption of digital transformation journeys due to recent global events, particularly in fields such as engineering, mining, oil and gas, and manufacturing. These investments may have significant payoffs, as regional economic development experts in Northeast Ohio estimate that implementing IIoT across facilities and operations will generate billions for the region’s economy because of the increased efficiencies.

CNN
Tesla may finally be coming to India. The country’s transport minister, Nitin Gadkari, says that Elon Musk’s electric car company will start selling vehicles there next year.

Business Insider
Electric Assisted Vehicles (EAV) has unveiled a tiny zero-emissions taxi that it says can cut city traffic congestion in half in the next five years. The EAV Taki isn’t your typical New York City yellow cab. Instead, it’s tiny, lightweight and is in part an upgraded electric bicycle, which means the vehicle will be allowed to travel in both car and bike lanes, according to EAV’s website. 

New Equipment Digest
The electronics manufacturing industry is experiencing a renaissance. With emerging technologies driving new factory capabilities, more production moving back onshore, and increased efforts to streamline once-complex supply chains, the future of the industry looks different moving into 2021 than it has in previous years. These shifts didn’t come gently; as the pandemic raged in early 2020, shutdowns caused major turbulence in manufacturing employment and operational demands, which required quick strategy reevaluations and adaptions.