A long-time employee has just left the firm. Your first concern is, "What will we do without him or her?"

Rayovac Corp. (Madison, WI) carefully selects the materials that make up its industrial flashlights, because industrial and construction workers purchase flashlights based on their ability to withstand harsh conditions. Industrial flashlight components must be impact-, heat- and chemical-resistant, as well as easy to handle.

BG Laboratories Inc. (Binghampton, NY) manufactures space-saving miniature transformers for laptop computer modems, and the thin-wall molding capabilities and other properties of DuPont's (Wilmington, DE) Zenite LCP 7130 play a key role in the manufacturing process.

PTC (Waltham, MA), a collaborative product development company, is using Fakespace Systems Inc. (Kitchener, Canada) for stereoscopic visualization with built-in motion tracking and interactivity for virtual reality application suite demonstrations.

Traditional construction methods for high-performance boats use plywood egg crate and heavy glass epoxy laminate in the hull structure to provide the power, rigidity, security and ride qualities needed for speed over the water.

When Polaris Pool Systems (Vista, CA), a manufacturer of automatic pool cleaners, was experiencing gear jam-ups due to loose-fitting bearings, they turned to the SureWeld 20 ultrasonic plastic welder from Sonobond Ultrasonics (West Chester, PA) to weld the bearing securely in place.

Skill Tool & Die (Cleveland, OH) set a goal of producing a spare tire bracket more efficiently and with better quality. Achieving this goal required streamlining the job from manual welding to a fully automated welding operation.

The path to manufacturing excellence begins in grade school classrooms. And the foundation for manufacturing excellence is not touchy-feely stuff; a solid foundation for manufacturing excellence is built on engineering, mathematics and science. Without this foundation, the most superior workforce in the universe cannot produce manufacturing excellence.

Allocating time, personnel and financial resources appropriately is crucial to bringing an assembly project from the concept stage to profitable production, on time and within budget.

Lasko Metal Products Inc. (West Chester, PA), a manufacturer of ventilation devices and household appliances, needed a welding method for the assembly of reservoir jugs for its humidifiers. These oddly-shaped reservoir jugs are large and can hold several gallons of fluid.