The Kapco (www.kapcoinc.com ) stamping facility gained significant media attention after being cited in July 2015 for numerous safety violations. A year after a worker amputated part of her right index finger on a spot welding machine at the metal stamping plant, a co-worker suffered a similar injury on the same machine on Feb. 5, 2015 leading to an OSHA investigation.
The 3PL market -- defined here as non-asset based transportation, warehousing, and integrated supply chain services -- witnessed a decline in the second quarter of 2015. The growth was hampered mainly due to currency fluctuations and decreasing oil prices. The overall market suffered an 8.2 percent decline. The worst hit was the non-asset based international transportation services market with a decline of 10.2 percent.
Categories of 3PLs
At the recent ARC India Forum in Bangalore, ARC provided opportunities for end users to share their experiences with the delegates, comprised of both technology solution providers and users.
End user organizations in India are looking to both reduce their dependency on manual operations and have real-time data available to use to improve production efficiency and capacity. As a result, we're seeing in-creased levels of automation in the industry.
As the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) concept continues to evolve, several manufacturing industry groups have, or plan to, issue reference architectures for use in establishing an IIoT ecosystem. These framework documents focus on system requirements and the "what," and sometimes the "who," behind implementation planning, while typically leaving the "how" up to other efforts or the implementer.
At the recent ARC Advisory Group Forum in Bangalore, India, the keynote presentations included discussions on the challenges of transitioning towards a digital and connected enterprise. Automation plays a pivotal role in the evolution of an information-driven business architecture. Companies are beginning to find ways to quantify the returns from incorporating the latest technologies, such as smart sensors, Big Data, and advanced analytics.
When evaluating the value of an investment in training simulator technology for your plant, it's important to first consider how and in what type of facility the training simulator would be used. For example, would the simulator be used to train plant managers, engineers, and/or maintenance technicians as well as operators? Would the simulator also be used to test control strategies in a safe, offline environment? And, perhaps most importantly, is the target plant a new, grassroots facility, or an existing brownfield facility?
ARC and Plant Services magazine jointly promoted and conducted the survey in Q1-2015.
ARC Advisory Group recently conducted a web-based survey in conjunction with Plant Services magazine to identify gaps in the capabilities of automation used to protect rotating equipment. This survey assessed automation strategies used by machine builders and manufacturers for implementing layers of protection measures for detecting imbalance, cavitation, vibration, and other abnormal operating conditions.
Executive Overview
In a recent keynote address, Rich Beck, the Sr. Vice President of Global Operations at PepsiCo, commented that the company's supply chain goals included "digitizing the value chain" and "sustainability."
ARC has been covering supply chain management for twenty years. Our supply chain analysts hear many, many supply chain speeches. None can ever remember hearing a top supply chain executive saying sustainability was one of their top goals. In fact, sustainability is rarely mentioned.
While the initial hype over additive manufacturing (3D printing) has toned down a bit, and investor enthusiasm for this emerging segment has declined (with the 52-week average share price for some suppliers drop-ping by over 70 percent), the markets for both purely additive machines and the emerging class of hybrid machine tools that incorporate both subtractive and additive metalworking elements in the same work envelope are expanding.
For decades, upstream operating companies have employed a variety of different pump systems to help increase production of mature wells and other production and product transfer applications, both onshore and offshore. This includes crude oil transfer, chemical injection for flow assurance or enhanced oil recovery (EOR), multiphase pumping in unconventional wells, subsea boosting, and increasingly, for CO2 injection for EOR.