November 2011

Inside American R&D – Part II: Big Cuts on Campus

Photo from flickr.com/photos/hazara/

Across the Charles River from Harvard University’s historic main campus is a huge vacant lot surrounded by a temporary fence. This site in Boston’s Allston neighborhood was to have become a $1 billion, state-of-the-art science complex, housing new departments that would do cutting-edge research into stem cells, regenerative biology, and “biologically inspired engineering.” But even famously wealthy Harvard has found …

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Supply Chain Diversity Spells Success for Caterpillar

flickr.com/photos/adc/

Leading companies today need to excel at both product innovation and supply chain excellence. Behind every great company is a great (and well-managed) supply chain. In early November the Caterpillar facility in Akashi, Japan produced 100 excavators in a single day. This milestone was attributed in large part to the collaboration between the operations team in Akashi and its suppliers. …

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Product Complexity, Product Development – And a Faster Car

IMG_2334

Today is my car’s birthday. Since I brought it home, my little Honda has gone over 150,000 miles in seven years of service – much to the disbelief of friends who know my checkered past of vehicle ownership. I remember buying my car – at the time, it was the nicest thing I’d ever owned. Brand new, shiny and the …

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Inside American R&D – Part I: Losing the Competitive Edge

Photo from flickr.com/photos/ucdaviscoe/

Amid the hulks of abandoned steel mills in a part of the country that epitomizes the decline of American manufacturing is a worrying symbol of another sort. It’s not a ruin. It’s a building owned by Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where an institute named for automotive icon Lee Iacocca teaches entrepreneurship and leadership to business students from around the …

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Manufacturing’s Role in Global Product Development: Does Where Matter?

Courtesy of LiuGong

Last month, MIT held its annual Emerging Technology conference, EmTech 11. The conference focused primarily on advocating—and demonstrating—innovative and disruptive technologies, but also business drivers and means of innovation. In other words, new ideas are great, but are there markets for them and if so, how do you produce and deliver the final goods? What really caught my eye while …

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Mathcad and the Production of Currency

Money. It is something most of us either handle or think about every day. Especially during this time of the year, when we are fast approaching “Black Friday”, the day after Thanksgiving which traditionally marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Recently after work, when I was trying to dig through my wallet and get out my Charlie Card …

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McLaren Unveils Multi-Million-Dollar Factory for its Supercars

MP4-12C (courtesy of McLaren)

A new £50m ($78m) factory to build McLaren supercars has been officially opened in Surrey, United Kingdom, by UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Prime Minister David Cameron opened the new 32,000-square-meter production center which is alongside the McLaren Technology Center headquarters, also home to the group’s Formula 1 team. All of McLaren‘s high-performance models will be built at the new …

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UK Prime Minister Launches Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering

The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering will be awarded every other year to an individual or team of up to three, of any nationality, responsible for advancing the application of engineering knowledge. The prize is worth $1.6 million (£1 million). United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron said he hopes it will carry the same stature as the Nobel Prize. “For …

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New Regs Tighten Compliance for Medical Devices Manufacturers

Photo from flickr.com/photos/fdaphotos/

There are amazing things going on in the medical devices industry today, as evidenced by stories of war vets returning from Afghanistan with prosthetic limbs, and the 50-year-old Englishman who last month become the world’s first patient to have a Smartphone built into an artificial arm. But as these medical devices become more common and complex, so are demands from …

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Back to the Future II Nike MAG Shoes make $4.7 Million for Parkinson’s

Nike MAGs - courtesy of the Michael J Fox Foundation

In Back to the Future II, Marty McFly steps out of a DeLorean into 2015. Doc Brown immediately hands him new clothes, and Marty jams his feet into ultramodern Nike MAG shoes – the laces tighten automatically and the Nike logo lights up. It’s a memorable scene and the first in the movie to show us what kind of technology …

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