AGMA Gear Industry News

Business activity for New York manufacturers unexpectedly declined in the month of May, according to a report released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Monday.

Nineteen gear companies founded the American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA) in 1916-1917 to advance and improve their industry through the standardization of gear design, manufacture and application. AGMA has traveled a long way over the past 100 years, navigating through war, peace, dramatic technology advancements, and economic ups and downs. Throughout these years, thousands of people at hundreds of gear manufacturers worldwide have worked to improve gearing—work that has benefited everyone on the planet. AGMA celebrates its Centennial year with more than 500 member companies who still share that original dedication to advancing gear science and technology. This timeline highlights some of AGMA's milestones over the past century. Congratulations and thank you to the AGMA members past, present and future for your hard work and dedication to your industry!

More than 40 percent of organizations expect the Internet of Things (IoT) to transform their business or offer significant new revenue or cost-savings opportunities over the next three years, according to industry analyst firm Gartner. 

This is a column, written by a millennial, on how manufacturers can succeed with the IoT and attract millennials into the manufacturing workforce.

A new report from the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, found that a third of production workers—non-managers working on factory floors and in related occupations—earn so little that their families receive some form of public assistance such as food stamps or Earned Income Tax Credit. Many of those workers are temps, who account for a growing share of factory employment.

A veteran Audi executive, Peter Hochholdinger, will be responsible for increasing and improving production of Tesla's Model S sedan and Model X SUV. He will also develop the production plan for the company's lower-cost Model 3 sedan, which goes on sale next year.

The U.S. Navy is ready to take ownership of the Zumwalt, its largest and most technologically sophisticated destroyer. The Zumwalt is the first new class of warship built at Bath Iron Works since the Arleigh Burke slid into the Kennebec River in 1989. 

Hyperloop, the supersonic transport system proposed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, has taken a tentative step toward reality with the first public test of a prototype propulsion system.

It wasn’t that long ago that San Francisco was a big-time manufacturing town—shipyards, ironworks, canneries, box factories, big bakeries, everything. The Mechanics Monument on Market Street—iron men working with steel—celebrates that spirit.

Manufacturers are at risk of a cyberattack for a variety of reasons. First, even if manufacturers don’t collect and store the same amount of personally identifiable information as a healthcare or financial services company might, they still will have that type of information about their own employees and have a responsibility to keep it confidential. 

Turkey and Ukraine reached an official agreement for the joint manufacturing of passenger and cargo planes. The agreement also involves areas such as industry, technology, energy, agriculture and transport.

Several recent pieces in the Economist and the Wall Street Journal have touched on technical advances in the field of 3D printing, or "additive manufacturing." This process promises ultimately to be cheaper and faster than traditional die-and-mold methods, which typically take a long time to set up, have a high up-front cost and provide limited opportunities for on-the-fly redesigns.

House lawmakers expressed their concern over the growing shortage of skilled workers to fill manufacturing jobs in the United States, during a House Committee on Small Business hearing last week. Chairman Steve Chabot said between baby boomers retiring and economic expansion, there is a lack of qualified people to fill vacancies in an industry that adds $2 trillion to the economy annually.

The 2016 Industrial Manufacturing Trends Report, published by PwC, asserts that investments in technology are "essential" for the growth of the U.S. manufacturing sector. According to the report, making strategic investments is one key to growth, particularly in fast-evolving industries.

Although the promise of big data insights into airplane performance is literally huge—a jet engine alone can throw off a half-terabyte of info each flight—Lufthansa Technik, the world’s largest commercial aircraft maintenance, repair and operations company ("MRO"), sees even bigger potential for correlating that with other data it collects, if not uniquely, then at least more broadly and deeply.

June 21-23, 2016  |  Hyatt Regency Cleveland at the Arcade  |  Cleveland, OH

This seminar provides the gear design engineer with a broad understanding of the methods used to manufacture and inspect gears, and how the resultant information can be applied and interpreted in the design process. This course includes a plant tour of Gear Tec.

It was a better than expected start to the year for the German economy, as its GDP growth rate more than doubled in the opening quarter of 2016. However, it is likely that growth will slow in the second quarter, with business survey data already signalling a slowdown.

Wind-turbine service technicians, who must work at extreme heights during temperamental weather, occupy a job category projected to expand more than any other through 2024, outpacing healthcare and technology, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The convergence of technologies and terms revolving around the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Smart Manufacturing, Big Data, digital manufacturing and Industry 4.0, can be confusing at best to many industry veterans, as well as to newcomers. At MESA 2016, held last week by the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA; Chandler, AZ) in the Chicago area, industry leaders sought to untangle or "demystify" the web of interconnected technologies comprising Smart Manufacturing and the IIoT.

The gap between leadership skills and ever-evolving production systems is widening. Without relevant, updated skill sets, leaders tend to break ranks and improvise how they engage the workforce, drive results, and meet customer needs. This variance in leadership performance lowers production quality and raises costs. It’s little wonder that manufacturing, among multiple industries, ranks last in leadership quality. As companies embark on the journey to Manufacturing 4.0, they need to put in place systems for identifying and developing a new set of leadership attributes based on lean thinking.