Ralph Lauren Keeps "Made In USA" Honest for Sochi

The Ralph Lauren Corporation has been one of the most stable businesses in American fashion and merchandising since its inception as Polo Ralph Lauren in 1967.  And while it's not exactly a trail blazer in the fashion industry, its decision to ensure all of the clothing and apparel worn by Team USA at the Sochi Olympics this Winter is exactly that- made in the USA- is not only reassuring from a place of National pride, it also may lay down a fresh template for similar businesses to follow in the near future.

Yarn to make Team USA uniforms will be supplied 

by an American company.

It wasn't easy to make the transition to a completely domestic supply line, all of which has been a clear response to the flash uproar that went through mainstream media when it became widespread knowledge Team USA's clothing was Chinese-manufactured during the London 2012 games.  Ralph Lauren clearly took the initiative, however, and found companies such as Imperial Stock Brand in Northwestern Oregon.  Imperial Stock, a sheep-shearing business, has been highlighted by Ralph Lauren as providing the yarn for the clothing.  In addition are 40 other American vendors involved in the process of making the line, including a Pennsylvania based yarn spinning company , Nazareth-based Kraemer Textiles.  Ralph Lauren has been very candid, however in observing the limitations of an exclusively American supply chain; the lack of volume in meeting demand resulted in less of a variety of apparel for this winter's events.  And its reasons for trying to work within those constraints may have less to do with patriotism and more to do with shoring up their own PR shakiness.

No one has made any complaints, however.  Indeed the tradeoff is probably much more preferred to

Team USA wearing uniforms made somewhere other than the nation they've literally sweat and bled for in order to represent at Sochi.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

NC State Scientists Create Thin Film One Atom Thick

Researchers at North Carolina State University may have permanently wedged open the door leading to manufacturing products, software, and hardware on the atomic level:

Their latest method of thin-filmmaking can consistently create semi-conductor films that have a monolayer as thick as one atom; smaller than any previous endeavor.

Dr. Linyou Cao, assistant professor at NC State and senior author of the publication explaining the technique (which you can read here) translated to Product Design and Development, the implications. "This could be used to scale current semiconductor technologies down to the atomic scale – lasers, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), computer chips, anything.”, Cao says.

Using a new technique they dub "self-limiting growth", the team essentially found a way to manipulate particles' tendencies to form into solids or vapors under extreme temperatures.  By controlling these molecular pressures, the researchers were able to ensure when they would cancel each other out, thereby controlling how thick each monolayer could be, down to the initial atomic layer.

Semiconducting on the atomic level.

While this method has only been proven to creat semiconductor film sheets themselves, Cao has patented the method, and he and his team are now working on creating thin film wafers on the atomic level consisting of different materials.  The hope is this will lead to the next level of building complicated transistors and signal-technology; leading to computerized equipment the size of a particle.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

FOLLOWING THE WRONG WORK INSTRUCTIONS CAN BURN THROUGH YOUR PROFITS

Those of us involved in US manufacturing know the implications of being registered to a quality system like ISO or TS16949. You establish a system, monitor it for effectiveness then prepare to defend it when a third party registrar comes around to conduct a surveillance audit.

Preparation usually involves making sure you are meeting your metric goals, issuing corrective actions when necessary and a number of other housekeeping items the auditor may choose to check.

One of the more mundane items that usually finds its way to the bottom of the preparation list is keeping work instructions current. These tend to get written once, then put aside, rarely looked at again. After all, the employee (machine operator, inspector, shipping clerk, etc.) knows how to perform a task and does not need to refer to an instruction to complete it.

But the day usually comes when that same employee is asked to deviate from the instruction. For example, a new finish may be substituted for a certain product. Or, a process may have to be changed slightly to accommodate a unique customer requirement. The employee can keep it all straight in his or her head. No need to take valuable production time to revise a piece of paper.  

But what happens if that employee is sick, on vacation or away from the plant responding to an emergency? A substitute steps in and follows the outdated instruction.

In the past this might have amounted to a “So what?” The person leaves out a step causing the product to be made slightly different than ordered. It’s a little mistake.

But the fact is these mistakes can mushroom into costly errors. What if it affects thousands of pounds of raw material ordered incorrectly? Or, the production of 100,000 assemblies that now have to be returned and reworked? The costs can be astronomical eating into profits and tarnishing your relationship with a customer.

So do yourself a favor: after reading this, have all of your employees (production and office) read their work instructions. Are they still doing things as written? Or, have subtle changes crept in over time? If so, now is the time to change them to reflect what actually takes place.

It’s time to take work instructions seriously before an error starts burning into your profits.

Joe Cappello is Director of Global Marketing for Rotor Clip Company. 

Newest Development In Space Tech: The Slingshot?

A "slingatron" prototype proposed by HyperV Technologies
could propel a 100 g object to a speed of one kilometre per second. 

Anyone who's ever witnessed  a space launch has a pretty fair comprehension of just how much power energy, and therefore, money, must go into the effort of getting a multi-ton apparatus of metal, composite, and computer systems off the ground and out of the Earth's gravitational pull.  So far, we've had one way of doing this: launching a shuttle with rockets pointing straight up in the air.  Makes sense, of course, since that's the place we're trying to get said shuttle to, right?  Shortest distance between two points and all that...

But it may not be the most efficient if you believe HyperV Technologies,  a start-up out of Chantilly, VA.  HyperV is re-defining our basic assumptions about the space launch with a prototype called the "Slingatron".  The Slingatron uses the physics behind the slingshot as a mass accelerator, essentially swinging a vehicle round and round until literally hurtling it into the sky, where rockets will kick in and handle the rest of propulsion.  The idea is this process significantly cuts into fuel and raw materials needed in the launching process.

In theory, the whole concept is interesting.  Applying it, however faces lots of challenges.  Firstly, the amount of g-force needed to achieve that kind of acceleration with that much mass would almost certainly kill anything living, so human cargo is out of the question.  Also, the site states a goal of getting objects into a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) of 7.6 km/sec, which in and of itself will take a large amount of energy to achieve, and that doesn't take into account air resistance either.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of HyperV's campaign, however, is how it is going about its fundraising.  The company has begun a kickstarter campaign with a goal of $250,000 in order to build a slightly bigger prototype than the one they have.

Conceptual image of a large-scale Slingatron
200-300 meters in diameter

Sure it's not exactly the most ambitious goal compared to most private space projects, but it is part of a growing trend of space and aeronautic tech ideas being marketed to the general public not only for awareness but for good ol' hard capital as well.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

ISM Report Shows The Worst May Be Behind Us

Recent articles I've done on the manufacturing trend in the US have always been in the context of the damage done in employment from the Great Recession.  Whether reports  delivered mostly good or bad news, there was always a general sense behind the numbers that, though manufacturing has widely been regarded as the darling of the recovery, the sector was still at the mercy of the larger, dreary, economic outlook along with every other sector in the country.

Yet, the Institute of Supply Management's (ISM) latest Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI) indicated an August  factory activity index of 55.7, slightly higher than the 55.4 percent in July, and a significant jump from 50.2 percent in the month of June.  This follows recent reports as far back as Spring of 2012 where the ISM report was indicating growth indexes under 50 percent, meaning the sector was shrinking, rather  than expanding.  And it's not just factory activity; to quote all the statistics in the report by Bradley J. Holcomb, ISM CPSM, CPSD, and chairman:

"August's PMI™ reading, the highest of the year, indicates expansion in the manufacturing sector for the third consecutive month. The New Orders Index increased in August by 4.9 percentage points to 63.2 percent, and the Production Index decreased by 2.6 percentage points to 62.4 percent. The Employment Index registered 53.3 percent, a decrease of 1.1 percentage points compared to July's reading of 54.4 percent. The Prices Index registered 54 percent, increasing 5 percentage points from July, indicating that overall raw materials prices increased when compared to last month. Comments from the panel range from slow to improving business conditions depending upon the industry."

This marks the sixth month in a row of general economic growth, the third consecutive month of growth in production, and perhaps more telling, the highest level of growth in production since May of 2004, with 13 of the 18 overall American manufacturing industries reporting expansion of some kind (although it's a little worrisome that one of the industries reporting contraction in July is machinery).

Is it safe to say the economy, on the back of the steady expansion of American manufacturing, is out of the woods?  Probably not.  However, past think-tanks and index reports had been careful to view all numbers in the context of phrases like "double-dip recession", "stagnation", and "holy hell's bells, the sky is falling".  The general stability and consistency this portion of the calendar year is contributing to an overall optimistic outlook moving forward for the US economy.  And it's nice to know that through it all was the steady hand of the manufacturing sector.  Let's hope it continues.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

New Idea Generates Electricity From Sewage

I've posted blogs before on the new ways inventors and developers are thinking about making the world's waste management systems cheaper and more efficient in energy usage.  It makes sense that, since this is an aspect of society that is incredibly arcane in design, manufacturing could play a huge role in its upgrade.  Unfortunately, the kinds of ideas out there involve so much reform of current infrastructure, it's impossible imagining the kind of political and financial gumption required to make any of them happen in this particular reality.  That being said, there's no reason we can't improve on existing infrastructure:

This new form of harvesting electricity from wastewater actually relies on a decade-old technology called microbial fuel cells.  The name says it all: microbes and their consumption process are isolated and the energy given off is harvested.  In this case, a simple electrode twin-chamber apparatus does most of the work.  As articulated by Bruce E. Logan PhD, who heads a research group in Penn State University, the trick is merely to separate bacterial microbes in an air-tight chamber so the electrons given off can be funneled through a circuit before bonding with oxygen atoms.

   

While the idea is simple in concept, as Logan explains in the video, so much has to go right to implement it on the large scale, that more has to go into the R&D side of the project first.  However, with each American using 70 gallons a day in water, electricity demand is only going to rise (rise is too nice of a term to describe it: it will skyrocket).  If we're not going to address it on the larger scale, small tweaks like this one may add up to address it on the smaller one.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.

New Method Uses Solar Energy To Augment Natural Gas Energy

Contrary to what the prevailing notion is, there are some of us in the manufacturing community that view the US shale gas boom as welcome, but temporary.  A quick look at history shows us that we've been here before.  In post-WWII America, we discovered that established rates of domestic oil production would result in exhaustion within the century, thus beginning a long and arduous foreign policy of investment in resources located in some of the most inconvenient and politically dangerous areas of the world.

And while new techniques in harvesting natural gas have enabled the US to be master of its own destiny for a time, it's important to keep in mind we're still dealing with a finite resource that, just like all other previous finite resources we've used, will eventually run short.  With that in perspective, even more innovations, techniques, and designs will be required if we want to continue on the road of true energy independence.

One such innovation that may have a huge impact in the immediate future is a new method developed by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest Labs.  Using a mirrored parabolic dish, the sun's solar rays are concentrated like a magnifying glass into a central point.  This concentrated solar power is then directed to a device made of a chemical reactor and heat exchangers, which use the solar energy to heat flowing natural gas, converting both into syngas; hydrogen and carbon monoxide.  The result is a whopping 20 percent less natural gas used to run the power plant.  Scientists at the lab also believe they can eventually create a model where the electricity produced by a hybrid syngas power plant would be just 6 cents per kilowatt/hr by 2020, a very competitive rate.

 The process still has a long way to go, but with all the hits the solar investment landscape has been taking these days, this is a promising development.  Solar energy standing on its own as a longstanding, stable energy alternative has been a hard sell; solar being used as an augmentation for existing energy models, on the other hand, could be a very intriguing aspect.

Donal Thoms-Cappello is a freelance writer for Rotor Clip Company.