Some automation specifiers tell us they have no choice. They have to buy from the big boys. For a variety of reasons, others just won't consider smaller companies. Is everyone this headstrong?

Read our November cover story "Can Small Vendors Play Big?"

The approaches to designing machines and the methods for building them are naturally as different as the machines themselves. So, when I researched and wrote Control Design's October cover story on modular machines, "Easier Pieces," I found many different levels of understanding about modular machine building. For example, some OEMs build more Lego-like machines, so they can work better within production lines. However, others don't need to plug-and-play multiple equipment because they only run one standalone machine in a small shop. Meanwhile, some builders are adding modular capabilities because their users demand them, while other aren't going modular apparently because their users aren't as demanding or perhaps because a few builders are ignoring their users. It can be hard to tell the difference between not having to innovate and not wanting to innovate or just being asleep. What do you think?

Have you thought about rebuilding machinery instead of buying new? How far did you take that idea? Did you find a hurdle you just couldn’t overcome, or are you using rebuilt machines. Tell us.

You can read our article Rebuild or Buy New?

Discrete manufacturing inevitably leads to process control considerations and vice versa. Elements of one find their way into the other with regularity. Let us know about some of your more challenging and vexing hybrid encounters.

Read our story Semiconductor Fab Clears the Air.

Was your childhood scarred by science fairs? Did you work for weeks on a project that turned out to be incredibly lame compared to other kids’ stuff that was obviously done by their engineer parents? Here’s your chance to get even.
Maker Faire (makerfaire.com) is three-year old science fair open to all ages but dominated by adult projects. It is held twice a year, once in May in San Mateo, CA and once in October in Austin, TX.
The event has grown from humble beginnings to a major shindig. The most recent event in San Mateo in May featured projects from over 500 makers, record attendance of 65,000, and a new educational program.
Major companies are also getting into the act as sponsors and exhibitors. At the most recent event, Disney Consumer Products announced its entry into the robotic toy market. Other big name sponsors and exhibiters included Microsoft, Google, and IBM.
All prospective makers must submit pre-event proposals to the fair staff. Approved exhibitors are given a 10’ x 10’ booth space to show their wares. Although there are no prizes or judges, recognition is doled out by fair attendees and by media covering the event.
Commercial firms pay to exhibit at the event, no doubt hoping to promote their products to fair participants. Some companies such as Disney sell ready made toys at the event. Other companies such as sparkfun electronics (sparkfun.com) sell components that makers can use in their own projects.
Everyone likes to play with fire, so a blisteringly interactive large-scale fire toy that translates anyone's movement into fire was a huge hit. A central stage was lined with proximity sensors and surrounded by an outer ring of flame effects, creating huge bursts of flame when a dancer moved onstage.
All of the projects mentioned above are described in more detail at makerfaire.com via words, photos, and sometimes videos. Evaluate the competition and join in the fun!

Many journalists don’t dig for data and don’t know how to analyze numbers using basic statistics. Instead, they present sensationalist headlines that generate visceral fears and inaccurately influence opinions.
For example, a common headline over the past few decades suggests that higher oil prices drive stocks down. You know that a declining stock market is not good for sales of your machines, for your career, and for your investment portfolio; so the recent rise in oil prices may be causing you great concern. Should it?
Using the Internet and Excel, you can run a correlation analysis between virtually any published data sets from oil prices to stock prices to machine tool sales.
The Excel function “=CORREL” checks correlation between two sets of data. Correlation values are always between -1 and plus 1. A correlation of 1 means the two data sets move in perfect lock step, a correlation of -1 means the data sets move in a perfectly opposite fashion. A correlation of 0 means the data sets are random and have no relationship to each other.
Put another way, correlation numbers near 1 or -1 mean that changes in one variable cause the second variable to change positively or negatively respectively. Correlation numbers near 0 mean that changes in one variable don’t cause changes in the second variable.
To check correlation of oil prices and stock prices, we found stock prices at yahoo.com and oil prices at inflationdata.com. We imported monthly data from January 1974 to November 2007 into an Excel spreadsheet.
The Jan 1974-Nov 2007 time period was selected because it had wide fluctuations in stock and oil prices, it is relatively recent, and it contains enough data points to generate a valid correlation. The S&P 500 stock index is a widely used index representing almost half of worldwide stock market capitalization.
When comparing virtually any economic data, one must first strip out inflation effects or else the correlation will always be strongly positive because prices tend to increase over time. This is done by comparing the percent change from month to month instead of the raw price data.
Comparing percentage change in monthly stock and oil prices over the specified time period yields a negative correlation of -.15. Per wikepedia.com, this is a very weak tending toward insignificant negative correlation. That means that stock prices go down a bit when oil prices go up, but not enough to matter or to worry about.
You can perform similar correlation analysis on any data sets of interest to you and your company and reveal the truth behind the headlines.

Don’t tell the U.S. presidential candidates as they campaign through the heartland, because they might come after us. The chief cause for manufacturing job losses in the U.S. is not migration of jobs to low cost countries like China, India, or Mexico. The bogeymen are instead automation professionals like you and me.
The facts are undeniable. Automation is the single biggest destroyer of manufacturing jobs not just in the U.S., but worldwide. And that’s a good thing. It’s called productivity, and making more stuff with fewer people is perhaps the major driver behind improved living standards worldwide over the last few centuries.
U.S. Real Value Added Manufacturing output, a good proxy for stuff made, advanced from about $1.1 to about 1.4 trillion from 1995 to 2002. During that same period, the U.S. lost 2 million manufacturing jobs.
Perhaps these manufacturing jobs are moving to China? No, China lost 15 million manufacturing jobs during that time span. Mexican manufacturing employment also declined, and Indian manufacturing employment was flat at best.
Rather than spending billions on protectionism, nations and their workforces would be better off spending a fraction of those sums re-training low-skilled manufacturing workers displaced by automation. These workers could then become productive members of the service sector, or highly trained automation and machine operations employees in the manufacturing sector.

Should I hire that promising new person I just interviewed? Should we push forward with our plan to expand our markets internationally? Should we invest in next-generation automaton systems for our machines? Not if you read the headlines.
But letting media headlines drive business decisions is problematic as the media feeds on greed and fear, two of the most visceral human emotions.
During most of my lifetime and certainly throughout this decade, the media focus has been on fear. This focus on fear directly contradicts long and short term historical evidence.
History has been recorded with enough accuracy for us to know that standards of living have been improving dramatically for thousands of years. The United States has seen its stock market rise by an average of about 10% per year since 1925. More recently, the global economy just completed its fifth straight year of over 4% annual growth, the longest period of such strong expansion since the early 1970s.
Knowing these facts, it would seem that any prediction of short and especially long-term reversals in these trends would be rare and backed by irrefutable evidence.
Instead, the media takes the opposite tack and daily proclaims the imminent demise of society as we know it unless we do something drastic. And those are the optimistic articles. The pessimistic take is that it is already too late and that we are all doomed to a bleak future of wandering a barren earth in a futile search for food and shelter. Who would hire or invest anything given such predictions?
Good news is ignored, and bad news is trumpeted. And of course, gloom and doom are not limited to newspapers and magazines; movies chime in.
I don’t recall one movie released during my adult lifetime that portrayed the future in a positive light. For every Blade Runner and Road Warrior with their apocalyptic visions of the future, why isn’t there a movie depicting a much more likely and dramatically better future? Shouldn’t the burden of proof be on those who predict a radical reversal of undisputed historical evidence?
Why is the media in all of its forms so relentlessly given to unrealistic predictions of a dire future? My theory is that secular types who don’t believe in an afterlife are terrified that they will miss an earthly future better than the present. The only way to assuage their fears is to convince themselves that, contrary to thousands of years of evidence, the future will be downright awful.
Believing headlines can lead to bad decisions. In my Machine Builder Mojo column in our April issue, I will show you how to get behind the headlines to source data and how to analyze these source data to get the real facts.

Meetings and group decision making are all the rage in corporate America, but both can be time-consuming pains. Let’s face it, when you go to a meeting on a subject of professional interest, you have certain ideas about how things should be done. Dealing with less enlightened meeting participants is frustrating and takes way too long. Worse, you often come out of the meeting with few if any of your ideas incorporated into the final decisions. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that there is a foolproof method to get things done the right way, your way, in a group setting.

Go to each meeting with well thought out ideas concerning desired outcomes. Say nothing. When someone articulates an idea close to yours, agree wholeheartedly. If necessary, modify their idea as necessary to fit yours more closely.

In some instances, no one in the group will be smart enough to independently voice ideas close to yours. No problem. It is rather easy to manipulate other group members into eventually advancing your ideas. Most people love to talk about their own ideas, and with a little subterfuge you can put a few words in their mouth. All it takes is a little patience and a few well placed words. After a while, it is actually quite fun.