Satellites come in many shapes and sizes, including large, medium, small and nano. The latter are typically put into orbit by deployers on the International Space Station, or launched as secondary payloads on a carrier rocket.

Engineers at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works recently completed a prototype aircraft article that demonstrates how transformational technologies can enable aircraft components to be built more than 50 percent faster, reducing total production time by 20 to 40 percent.

Making things smarter is all the rage in manufacturing these days, be it the machines on the assembly line, or the overall plant itself. Rolls-Royce Deutschland (RRD), however, is going one step further.

Market analysts frequently point out that there is an ever-increasing demand for digital data storage. This is great news for Flexon Technology, a Bangkok-based integrator that serves manufacturers of cases for hard disk drive (HDD) data storage devices.

Like so many things in manufacturing, product testing is not a one-type-fits-all-applications procedure. Among the more well-known types of testing that manufacturers regularly perform are leak, mechanical performance, material (such as tensile strength) and computer simulation modeling.

Validation causes more headaches for medical device manufacturers than almost any other stage of the production process. For companies certified to ISO 13485, validation is always a costly and time-consuming undertaking, regardless of whether a new process is being set up or an existing process is being transferred.

First-pass yield is an important manufacturing metric. It measures the effectiveness of a process and provides an indication of how well we are eliminating waste.

RFID technology can help manufacturers control access to critical hardware and software. What's the best way to ensure product quality and production uptime in industrial automation? Make sure that only trained and authorized people can access the programmable controllers.