When you hear the phrase, "Industrial Internet of Things," what do you think of first? When we asked subscribers to ASSEMBLY and Quality magazines that question earlier this year, the answers were all over the map.

Many products installed in a home are taken for granted as things that should always work properly. A good example is the electrical outlet.

Many engineers mistakenly believe that vibratory bowl feeders can only be designed to feed one specific part, but that's not quite right.

Automakers are scrambling to build a new generation of vehicles that are intelligent, connected and electrified. That’s forcing engineers to rethink how traditional assembly lines and production processes function.

Consumers spend some $1 billion to buy 2 billion lightbulbs each year in the U.S. That’s more than 6 million every day. High-speed automated assembly is the only way to meet that kind of volume.

With so many ways to formulate plastic to get just the right combination of color, texture, strength and durability, it’s easy to forget how the parts will be assembled. However, if the parts will be assembled with screws, overlooking such parameters as thread style, driver speed and boss design could spell disaster on the assembly line.

There are many ways to linearly move an object from point A to point B on an assembly line. But, not all of them are designed to optimize speed, accuracy and repeatability while performing the task.