At last week's DEX Expo Abbotsford 2019 exhibition, the keynote panel's topic was training. "Oh, no!" I thought. Boring! And I'm sitting right up front. It'll be hard to slip out of this one.
The topic turned out to be fascinating, as the four panelists knew their subject and were unafraid to speak up. (Some panel discussions can be, shall we say, painful to hear.) They knew what the problems are, they have solutions, and they know the barriers to the solutions.
One panelist was the head of a manufacturing industry group, another the head of a trade union, the other two from manufacturing companies. The #1 statistic we heard was that 80,000 jobs will need to be filled in manufacturing in three years in British Columbia (which is about 10% of Canada).
What I did not expect to hear is about a radical new approach to employment, called the Work Ethic system. "A work ethic outperforms any resume," explained one panelist. "You get to keep the job if your team accepts you." The work ethic approach eliminates seniority, so when the economy slows, the best are retained. As the representative from the union explained, there is more to just mowing a lawn; to apply the work ethic to lawn mowing, you are responsible enough to also do the edging and sweeping.
But employees won't stay with a bad boss. The #1 reason employees want to stay with a firm is when they are working on something that makes a difference in the world, or gives them personal satisfaction at a job well-done. So bosses also have to take on the work-ethic attitude.
The panel also said things along the lines of what I tell my kids and other young people: "Define your own job" and "don't just automatically go to college."
Where's the Bottleneck?
The panel identified two barriers to meeting the 60,000-need: colleges and governments. Colleges are still working on a century-old model, which fails to give students the core knowledge needed for work. The #1 ability for new employees coming into manufacturing, the panel said, is to know project management: know how to work within a budget, keep to a time line, know math, run Excel.
In Canada specifically, colleges are stuck in providing two- and four-year programs, teaching in a way that doesn't allow the graduate to begin working immediately.. In the USA, some colleges have moved to a three-month program: study for three months, then go to work.
As for government, well here in Canada the primary complaint from the panel was with regards to immigration. The Canadian government favors professional immigrants, but once they arrive, they are told they can no longer be a doctor or an engineer unless they go through the university system all over again.
The adjacent province of Alberta has reversed that approach: if a non-Canadian has a job offer from a company in Alberta, then they are in. It doesn't matter if it is machine operator or forklift driver.
(Related to this, one panelist bemoaned the use of the term "low- and medium-skilled jobs." There is no business, he said, if, after all the robots are finished their part of the work, there is no forklift driver to load the boxes on the delivery truck.)
There is a surprising amount of ignorance by city mayors and citizen representatives (legislators, in BC) about the amount of manufacturing in BC. "Not all manufacturing has moved to China." I think this is because most manufacturing is small and clean; no billowing smoke stacks or piles of coal out back. The DEX trade show had 125 booths, all of them local companies that manufactured things, or made things that manufacturers used to manufacture things.
The industry needs to do a better job explaining what manufacturing is today. The movie industry was cited as being well-known in BC, and so was good at getting tax breaks.
Social Media in Manufacturing
One panelist noted that there is a culture clash going on between generations. His generation grew up with the Cold War, when it was important to keep things secret. The new generation is open about everything on social media. The new openness also means breaking down the silos between trades, and telling kids they don't have to stay in a silo.
An attendee noted that social media is very important to young people, but that Instagram tends to be about fashion and cosmetics. Her company had tried to maintain a social media presence, without much success. "How do you make electrical switches and terminal blocks exciting on social media?" she asked.
One panelist suggested she explain how their products do important things in security or to enable fun activities. In the case of the panelist, he showcased the company's line of water pumps on Instagram as crucial in the running of the local children's hospital.
The attendee also wondered about women in manufacturing. Even ten years ago, a panelist said, a women in plumbing was considered an oddity. But no longer. Women get into the trades when they see other women there, and so can relate to them.
Robots Replacing People
The issue of robotics in manufacturing came up, and the panelists were upbeat about it. People are wary about working with robots, because they are new. But robots tend to take the 'crap' jobs, and the dangerous ones. Safety is paramount, because even one worker being injured affects a lot of other people.
In some cases, robots create more jobs. One panelist related the anecdote that five people had to be hired to shepherd a new robot. Another panelist posed the rhetorical question, 'How is HR [human resources] going to work with such things, like robotics?"
It is construction (not manufacturing) that is leaping forward to Industry 4.0, with companies like Caterpillar automating their machines. But then later in the exhibit hall, a representative for Bosch told me the company's CEO wants IoT [Internet of things] in all its products within five years; that's an Internet address attached to each and every item.
In summary, the systems are the people, and growth comes from people working well in good systems. The weakness in any system is thinking some jobs are of low value, when they are all crucial to the business.
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Just weeks before its Key Customer Conference takes place, Graphisoft releases ArchiCAD 24 with...
- Faster software startup, file opening, multi-project environments, and view switching
- New commands for creating openings, columns, and beams, and new Grasshopper Deconstruct Component tool
https://www.graphisoft.com/archicad/
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Kubotek3D updates its K-Display visualization and K-Compare file validation software to v1.2, adding updates to Catia and NX file formats. K-Display adds IFC as a supported file format. kubotek3d.com/news/kubotek3d-announces-update-to-k-display-and-k-compare-products
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Canon USA announces the new Océ Colorado 1650 printer with FLXfinish LED curing for outputting matte or gloss on individual prints, stretchable inks for bendable media, two-sided printing up to 64" wide, and more types of porous media. It is due to ship this summer.
csa.canon.com/online/portal/csa/csa/products/largeformat/
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I did not know that HP was still in the 3D printing biz. But here they are with a new, high-end unit -- HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series -- that they say outputs 200 parts a week. www8.hp.com/us/en/printers/3d-printers/products/multi-jet-fusion-5200.html
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Here is a site that lets you measure distances on Google Maps:
- Zoom into the area you want to measure.
- Click a starting point
- Click at the ending point
- Use the round grips to adjust the path of the route
freemaptools.com/measure-distance.htm
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CIMdata will host a free Webinar on generative design June 13, saying "Topology optimization was developed in the 1980s but did not fully take root until the development of additive manufacturing."
Register through register.gotowebinar.com/register/9115168391512578817
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SCIA releases SCIA Engineer 19 structural analysis and design software with
- Automated design of reinforced concrete beams
- Camber in steel members
- New parametric design
- New OpenAPI
scia.net/en/software/scia-engineer
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I got quoted! It's a discussion over whether AI for CAD user interfaces makes sense. advancedmanufacturing.org/artificial-intelligence-comes-to-cad/
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New from CADline is ARCHLine.XP Live, its Archviz animation software for turning 3D designs into immersive models -- images, videos, and walkthroughs simulating natural light, lamps, vegetation, and water. Learn more from archlinexp.com/archline-xp/live
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Epic Games acquires Twinmotion AEC rendering and animation software from Abvent. You can download Twinmotion free until November 2019, but the process is complex and takes a long time. (I know, I tried it.) unrealengine.com/en-US/twinmotion
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If you love manual drafting (like me), visit Museum of Obsolete Drafting Technology.
Tom Hardy collects "gadgets and gizmos that simplify designs without calculations."
https://www.moodt.org/exhibis
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Here's another downside of software subscriptions: you may be forced to upgrade from the stable old version that suits your needs to a new, possibly unsuitable version. Adobe: "Customers using those versions have been notified that they are no longer licensed to use them."
tech.slashdot.org/story/19/05/14/1353209/adobe-warns-creative-cloud-users-with-older-apps-of-legal-problems
- Don Beaton
The editor replies: I wonder if software firms are using security updates to force unwanted changes onto customers.
Re: "3D Thinking in Design and Architecture"
Great timing on your article. I just returned from a trip touring Normandy and Brittany where I visited amazing medieval churches and cathedrals (some over 1,000 years old) where these remarkable 3D designs in architecture are on display.
- Bob Mayer, ceo
IMSI/Design
The editor replies: What's interesting is not just the manual architecture abilities, but also the religious significance of the positioning, shape, and internal arrangement of these churches.
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You wrote, "Nearly no handheld calculator handles matrices, because they take up too much room in the limited memory."
There have been some advances. My TI Nspire CX CAS (about five years old) has 100MB of memory and 64MB of RAM. It's a programmable, graphing calculator. Programming allows very complex formulae, but is somewhat limited. For example, it's not able to call a function from a function (as often done by programmers) and programming using graphics is very limited. You cannot plot a line from P1(x, y, z) to P2(x, y, z). Other than that, it's a great calculator. It does matrix arithmetic, etc.
You wrote, "Those of us who practiced drafting became proficient in geometry without math."
I can still construct a parabola using straight line segments; Arnold Crosier showed me the technique fifty years ago. This curve is common to many loading diagrams in engineering.
You wrote, "...recorded 7% organic growth, excluding the exchange rate benefit."
I've always been concerned about "adjusted" values obfuscating things. I'm not sure what the current 'volume' adjusted price per millilitre is for snake oil. It's like the weather being seasonally adjusted.
- Dik Coates
The editor replies: After the TI-81, I got the HP 41CV and even the card reader ($1,000 or so), and wrote quite a few programs with it.
As for financial results, corporations regularly use several ways to report results, emphasizing the one that produces the best number -- GAAP, non-GAAP, foreign exchange adjusted, year over year, quarter over quarter. And now there are new accounting methods to further muddy the results.
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I especially enjoyed your discussion of geometry without math, and thought you might enjoy a poke through the [virtual] Museum of Obsolete Drafting Technology, where I've been collecting gadgets and gizmos that can help and simplify design without calculations. (Devices like the equal space-, and proportional dividers). See https://www.moodt.org/
- Thomas Rex Hardy
The editor replies: I still have my dad's leather-bound compass sets and trinagles, on top of my own drafting tools from my pre-CAD engineering days. I'm glad I never had to use a compass with the ink adapter!
Mr Hardy responds: You could make beautiful thick, sharp lines with a ruling pen. And you could also make an unholy smear!
I've spent many hours inking notes on mylar with a Leroy lettering set. That is one aspect of hand drafting that I do NOT miss! Nor do I miss the hours spent with an electric eraser scrubbing vellum sheets to "undo" hours of careful drawing when the client wants to change something.
But I sure do wish I had a couple of these tools when I was drawing by hand. I'm especially fond of "section liners" which were used for perfect and consistent cross hatching. It's amazing what a 19th- and even an 18th-century architect could calculate with a sector!
One thing that strikes me about these tools sets is that they are often pretty complete, and usually in excellent condition for their age and usage. The users respected and protected their tools. And no subscription fees!
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Man oh man, what a challenge! First I had to have Google tell me all about what a "vector" is.
- Herbert Grabowski
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As your figure shows, you need 3x3 transformation matrices to do 2D transformations. For 3D transformations you need 4x4 matrices.
- Dietmar Rudolph
Germany
Re: Notable Quotable
Bruce Schneier wrote, “We aren't responsible for every single use, but we are responsible for the world we create with our technologies."
It’s not that Tim Berners-Lees should feel “responsible” for the profitable perversion that Google, Facebook etc have made of his idealistic Internet. It’s that we should all hold accountable the “wrong hands” who do “bad things” with our technologies; and honour the good hands who choose to do good things.
Where we are all “responsible for the world we create” is by failing in clarity to defend the good uses and prevent the bad. Instead we blame “our technologies” themselves.
Classic diversionary tactic -- why do we continually fall for it?
- Tom Foster
Tom Foster Architecture, England
The editor replies: So true. It applies to books (enlightening and terrifying), television (documentaries and sitcoms), and even automobiles (ambulances and car bombs). Some have said that technology is morally neutral and it is only how we apply it in good and bad ways, but humans create technology, and so it cannot be neutral. The design of Facebook is not neutral.
It doesn't help that there are groups of people who promote the bad as a good.
Buy a few more backups. The last time Logitech stopped making my favorite mouse I could only find used models for $400+. People knew the new model was awful and knew what they had. I also hate the MX 2S.
Luckily I also wear the IT guy hat and have hoarded three spares since I go through them so fast. Lastly, that shiny metal band is actually some kind of plating on plastic. My "metal" is partially worn off showing some translucent white plastic.
- Eric Allen (via WorldCAD Access)
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Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
- Key Glass
- Anon: "Thank you for following and writing about our industry for so many years now."
Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these:
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"The Jewish-style delicatessen I am well familiar with but I’d somehow never had a bagel before, a dense version of a baozi [Chinese steamed bun] that’s boiled, then baked. And that hole in the middle? Apparently, it’s supposed to be there."
- Lucas Kwan Peterson, food columnist, Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-nyc-restaurant-scene-april-fools-2019-story.html |
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