For any plastic-injection-molding tooling company, nothing is more important than making sure its molds allow for consistent, quick and clean demolding of just-made parts. So anything that helps the company achieve this crucial goal is worth pursuing.

Nobody's perfect. Even the best trained, most experienced assemblers can make mistakes on the line, especially in high-mix production environments. Fortunately, a variety of software products are available to help prevent assembly errors.

Thermoelectric coolers are great for day trips, tailgating, boating or even overnight camping trips. Instead of ice, these coolers rely on a thin, flat electronic assembly called a Peltier device.

Flexible feeders are great at helping manufacturers accommodate product variants on the assembly line. After the feeder presents parts to a vision-guided robot, one or more cameras take images of the parts, and vision software tells the robot which parts are pickable and which are not. The robot then retrieves the parts for kitting or assembly.

The Budweiser Clydesdales have been an advertising icon since April 7, 1933, when the first hitch of eight horses trotted away from the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis with a wagon-load of beer to celebrate the end of Prohibition.

Daimler Buses is using additive manufacturing to make spare parts for vehicles on demand. The company's Centre of Competence for 3D Printing is examining more than 300,000 bus parts to determine their suitability for additive manufacturing.

Obtaining and interpreting the right data is essential to the success of any company, regardless of the industry it serves and the size of its business.

Planning for the future is necessary for every manufacturer. Sometimes it involves making plans for the next year or two, or maybe the next five or 10. But, looking 20 years into the future? That's reserved for select companies, like luxury-car manufacturer Bentley Motors Ltd.

Keeping an assembly process simple is always a smart approach to manufacturing any product. And one of the simplest ways to implement linear or rotary motion into an assembly process is with a pneumatic actuator.

Nissan has invested $305 million in its factory in Tochigi, Japan, to develop new technologies for assembling electric vehicles.