To be relevant in manufacturing today, you know it’s essential to constantly up your game. It’s crucial to the success of your business to integrate the latest technology, equipment, lean practices, management strategies and green solutions into your daily operations. The question is: how do you fit it all in when the world is changing at light speed, information is coming at you from all directions, and your resources are stretched to the breaking point?

The answer is CMTS.

"Engineering operations of companies in most industries...are under increasing pressure to more quickly design, manufacture and launch new products in the marketplace in response to ever-shorter product lifecycles and greater demand," and are further responsible for keeping the company innovative. But "leading companies are succeeding by augmenting their existing engineering capabilities with outsourced services to meet today's product development needs, while reducing operating costs, and positioning themselves for sustained high performance," he writes, and provides a list of examples from various industries. "Embracing outsourced services as part of the company's growth strategy will give companies the ability to stay ahead of the competition and remain on the path towards high performance in an increasingly challenging, global market."

StampingSimulation.com was established to bring Hi Tech forming simulation technology within reach of the entire tooling industry. Previously only afforded at OEM or Tier One level, the business model allows customers of all shapes and sizes instant access to the technology and a wealth of experience and knowledge - on demand, exactly when they need it, only when they need it.

Ken Taormina, global managing director of Engineering Services at Accenture, agrees with the business model, as he writes in the April 21 edition of IndustryWeek:

"Engineering operations of companies in most industries...are under increasing pressure to more quickly design, manufacture and launch new products in the marketplace in response to ever-shorter product lifecycles and greater demand," and are further responsible for keeping the company innovative. But "leading companies are succeeding by augmenting their existing engineering capabilities with outsourced services to meet today's product development needs, while reducing operating costs, and positioning themselves for sustained high performance," he writes, and provides a list of examples from various industries. "Embracing outsourced services as part of the company's growth strategy will give companies the ability to stay ahead of the competition and remain on the path towards high performance in an increasingly challenging, global market."

The full article can be found online here.

There are TWO ways to get "accurate" results that will match reality as closely as possible:

StampingSimulation.com offers world class AutoForm-Incremental, using two levels of service: SimulateLite and SimulateComplete.

SimulateLite is a virtual tryout service, where 3D models of the actual tooling blocks (solids or surfaces) are used in simulation to run the tool as if it were actually in the press. When combined with the correct material properties (which should be collected via our lab testing service), this is effectively a “final validation” of the tool before it is built. If problems are found, our SimulateLite base cost includes a total of 3x simulations to help find and fix the problem, before any tool steel is cut.

SimulateComplete is a process design and engineering service. Starting with no more than the final 3D product shape, StampingSimulation Engineers design and simulate a complete working process, including the removal of typical sheet metal forming problems, either by process or product changes.

In either case, there are TWO ways to get "accurate" results that will match reality as closely as possible:

1. Always send us the final 3D tooling data (we need to simulate the "actual" tool design, once it is ready, for most accurate results.) This may be AFTER a SimulateComplete job is finished or just before data is released to the shop floor for machining.

2. Perform material lab testing, that is, send a sample of "actual" material to our lab for testing and the data will be used in simulation. (Generic properties or mills certs are never the same as the real material on the shop floor).

You can read more about material lab testing here.

We call the above two steps “final validation” and it should be done on every job, just before the tool is made to ensure there are no unexpected surprise or problems that appear due to tool design changes or errors that do not match the original simulations.

You may like to read more about the importance of material properties and metal forming here:

http://www.metalformingmagazine.com/digital-magazine/2011/03/index.asp (pages 40-41)

StampingSimulation.com was recently published in the February edition of MetalForming Magazine. For those who missed it, you can check out the article here.

For a long time now, I have been sounding like a broken record about how important it is to test steel samples for use in simulation, and how “generic” properties or “mill certs” are hardly worth the paper they are written on. Also, I am always strongly suggesting that our customer do not “guess” material properties for use in simulation, and if they do, they must assume responsibility if reality does not match simulation.

The financial result was Ford’s best in more than a decade. The brand now has $US20.5 billion in gross cash on hand and a $US19.1 billion debt.

Ford’s debt, which it took on board before the global financial crisis in an attempt to protect itself fiscally, decreased 43 percent in 2010, down from $US33.6 billion to $US19.1 billion.

Fourth quarter results were down $US696 million from 2009 to $US190 million in 2010, although that included a $US960 million debt repayment which helped reduce the company’s automotive debt by $US1.9 billion.

Tim Lee, president of international operations at General Motors Co., comments on sales growth and manufacturing capacity in China. He spoke in New Delhi today.

“In China, in 2010, the market grew at an unbelievably high rate of nearly 40 percent. We do not see that kind of growth recurring in China in 2011. But we do see the Chinese market growing in the 10 percent to 15 percent range in 2011.”

“In China and India we will always try to stay slightly ahead of demand patterns with our manufacturing base and distribution potential. In China today, because the growth rates have been so strong for the last two years, we are actually little bit behind in terms of manufacturing capacity. We will work hard to catch up.”

Is manufacturing still king in northwest Ohio?

As the economy improves, many changes are being made. A decline in manufacturing jobs caused by the downturn, may have may wondering if it's still a top employer in the region, if not state. While agriculture remains the top business, who is the top employer?

The Ohio Department of Development's Policy Research and Strategic Planning Office listed the state's top employers as of 2010. The top five employers throughout the state are comprised of retail and health sector businesses as well as education.

Akerson previously stated that Volt production in 2011 could rise from a planned 10,000 units to 25,000, and it appears as though that upward trend will continue through 2012. GM planned to produce 60,000 Volts in 2012, but Akerson is now pushing for that target to increase to 120,000 units.

Toyota Motor Corp. plans to produce more vehicles without increasing capital investments as Volkswagen AG attempts to surpass it as the world’s largest carmaker by 2018.

“We are challenging ourselves to produce more even as we restrain capital spending,” President Akio Toyoda said yesterday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

While Detroit and Michigan are recovering from the recession and auto industry meltdown, the South is surging with two new assembly plants slated to open this year.

The 2012 Volkswagen Passat, a close sibling of the resigned Jetta in 2011 but larger and with a substantially lower price than last year’s model, was unveiled at the Detroit auto show.

The vast changes will include a transfer of manufacturing locations to the new U.S. VW plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.

The new Passat is VW’s latest attempt to infiltrate the former dominance in the midsize family sedan market shared by the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry.

Ford sales in India, spearheaded by the Ford Figo, nearly tripled last year to more than 83 000 units.

Ford India has been named "Manufacturer of the Year 2011" for its innovative practices in manufacturing and engineering excellence. The prizes were awarded at a ceremony in Mumbai last Friday.

Auto manufacturers have begun an invasion of the Consumer Electronics Show that will only grow in magnitude and significance in future years.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally showed off the Ford Focus EV during his keynote presentation. The sedan will be differentiated from the competing Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt by having double the charge rate (6.6 kilowatts). Ford's Nancy Gioia said a fully depleted battery can be recharged in 3-4 hours. Ford will begin manufacturing the vehicle at the end of this year, and will roll it out to 19 target cities during 2012. The all-electric vehicle will have an estimated driving range of 80-100 miles.

Ford will offer a home charging unit for $499 through Best Buy, which makes it the least expensive charger on the market. Ford has customized the EV charger that was co-developed by Leviton and Coulomb Technologies to accept power at up to 32 amps.

FOR the past two years the Detroit motor show has been a dismal affair. But this year the parties were in full swing again. Helped by government bail-outs and with debt burdens lightened by bankruptcy, Chrysler and GM are back on their feet; Ford, the other member of Detroit’s Big Three, is thriving. It took America’s car industry 20 years and a world war to recover the three-quarters of production wiped out by the 1929 crash. By comparison, the aftermath of the latest recession has been surprisingly comfortable.

Ominously for the locals, though, the biggest splash on opening day was made by a Volkswagen saloon, which is to be built in a new factory in Tennessee. Europe’s best big carmaker is taking aim at the heart of the American market for the first time in over 20 years. Its bold move is just one sign of growing fragmentation in a market once dominated by the Big Three and a small clutch of Japanese rivals.

By nearly every measure of success, Michigan's auto industry is now competitive.

Auto sales are on the upswing; corporate earnings are positive; productivity levels are on par with Japanese competitors; and quality is vastly improved, among other key benchmarks. Of course getting to this point hasn't been easy. Two of Detroit's automakers went bankrupt; thousands of jobs were lost; investors lost money; and many of the brands people loved have been eliminated.

Electric vehicles are nothing new. They were invented sometime during the 1830s in Scotland and later produced on a bigger level by France and Great Britain. In 1895 America began their interest in electric vehicles with a handful of companies producing them. It did not take long for them to die off because by the 1920s America had many more miles of roadway which called for the need of longer range vehicles, oil was a lot more affordable, starter motors were invented so hand cranks were not needed and the mass production of the internal combustion engines by Henry Ford.

Ford reduced its automotive operations’ debt by $12.8 billion last year, lowering annual interest costs by almost $1 billion. Ford, which will release fourth-quarter financial results this month, has said the auto operations would end 2010 with more cash than debt after a profitable year and a $1 billion dividend from the credit unit.

Ford reduced its automotive operations’ debt by $12.8 billion last year, lowering annual interest costs by almost $1 billion. Ford, which will release fourth-quarter financial results this month, has said the auto operations would end 2010 with more cash than debt after a profitable year and a $1 billion dividend from the credit unit.

Philippines - The local arm of Ford Motor Co. hit record sales to both domestic and export markets in 2010 due to the strong demand for vehicles across its lineup, the automotive firm said in a statement on June 13.

The business case against small cars is strong. Simplified, it goes like this: Americans don't want them, won't pay the dramatically higher prices required for them to be profitable — and don't need them because gas still is cheap.And, all else equal, the laws of physics still mean small cars are less safe than big cars in crashes.

None of that matters for carmakers now, though. Federal rules say that the industry's products must average 35.5 miles per gallon in 2016, and proposed regs could boost that to 62 mpg by 2025. That all but mandates shrinking cars.

etail sales and industrial production both rose in December, indicating that the U.S. economic recovery is picking up as the new year begins.

Purchases climbed 0.6 percent, capping the biggest annual increase in more than a decade, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Output at factories, mines and utilities increased 0.8 percent, the most in five months, according to data from the Federal Reserve.

Americans this year are forecast to boost the spending that accounts for 70 percent of the economy as tax cuts put more money in their pockets, increasing demand for Ford Motor Co. cars and Apple Inc. iPads. At the same time, an unexpected drop in consumer confidence indicates that rising gasoline prices and unemployment stuck above 9 percent pose a risk for sales.

It's a good time to be an engineer looking for a job at an automotive company. That's because Ford recently announced that it plans to add 7000 hourly and salaried jobs between this year and the next across the U.S.In nine cities including Detroit, Ford is searching for engineers specializing in batteries, system controls, software, and energy storage to advance the technology of electric vehicles.

With the replacement for the popular Escape on its way, Ford is hiring 1800 workers at its Louisville Assembly Plant where the SUV will be made. Next year, the automaker says it will hire at least 2500 more new manufacturing positions.“Working with our partners, including the UAW, Ford is finding competitive ways to engineer and build even more high-quality, fuel-efficient vehicles with technologies American consumers really want,” said Mark Fields, Ford president of The Americas.

General Motors (GM.N) is planning to build small battery electric vehicles in China within two years, and to increase overall production in China to meet local demand, executives said on Monday.

The small "city" type battery electric vehicles are expected to be exported at some point, possibly even to the United States, Tim Lee, GM's chief of international operations said on the sidelines of the Detroit auto show.

"We are probably within a couple of years of being in ... production on battery electric vehicles specifically for China," Lee said told reporters.

GM, which completed the largest ever IPO last year, is focusing on China and the United States as two critical markets.

GM is shipping vehicles to other countries in Asia and to Chile, but it has no plans at this time for exporting China-built vehicles to the United States, Lee said.

Louisiana regulators say contaminated soil has been cleaned up at a former General Motors plant where headlights were built.

When Lear Corp. (LEA-N109.362.622.45%) turned out the lights nearly two years ago at a plant in Ajax, Ont., that made seats for GM pickup trucks, Steve Batchelor knew it was game over. There was no hope of it ever reopening, he believed. “We were finished.”

In the grim days of May, 2009, leading up the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by General Motors Corp., it was hard to see how the auto industry could be turned around.

As it turns out, Mr. Batchelor, the president of local 1090 of the Canadian Auto Workers union, was wrong. Thanks to a Canadian and U.S. taxpayer bailout of tens of billions of dollars for GM and Chrysler, a catastrophic collapse of the auto industry was averted and it is clearly on the road to recovery. And a small piece of that recovery is evident in Ajax, east of Toronto, where the Lear factory is running again, making seats for Chrysler Group LLC.

The mood in much of the industry is buoyant, especially at this week’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit, about a 20-minute drive from Lear’s corporate headquarters in Southfield, Mich.

Ford (F-N18.65-0.03-0.16%) is adding 7,000 factory jobs in the United States, GM has returned to profitability and Chrysler Group would also be reporting profits if not for more than $1-billion (U.S.) in interest payments annually to the governments that bailed it out in 2009. One senior executive at a multinational auto parts maker – an industry veteran who has seen both its slumps and its prosperous times – describes the prevailing sentiment as “almost giddy euphoria.”

The question is how much of that euphoria will translate into new investments by auto parts makers in Canada – creating new jobs here and returning the industry to its pre-crisis days, when the auto sector was an eight-cylinder engine driving manufacturing in Canada.

“It’s not clear we can get back to that eight-cylinder level,” says Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at Bank of Montreal. “Ultimately, the question hinges on whether U.S. auto sales will return to pre-crisis levels on a sustained basis. I think that’s questionable. At the very least, it’s going to take a number of years.”

Before surging gas prices and the liquidity crisis hammered auto makers in 2008, ultimately sending Chrysler and GM into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and causing a massive restructuring of the entire industry, auto makers enjoyed sales of 16 million vehicles annually in the U.S. market.

Parts makers went along for the ride, with employment in the sector holding above 87,000 in Canada as late as 2007. Then it began to shrink, and quickly. For every 10 jobs in Canadian parts factories then, only seven still exist today, as employment shrank to 61,235 as of last October.

For 350 workers at the Lear plant, the ride ended on May 14, 2009, when GM closed its pickup truck plant in Oshawa, Ont., the only customer for the seats they put together in Ajax. The Lear plant was up for sale at one point, Mr. Batchelor says.

After it closed the plant, Lear won a contract with Chrysler to provide seats for the auto maker’s redesigned large sedans, which are assembled in Brampton, Ont., northwest of Toronto.

Lear was looking for a non-union supplier paying wages in the $14 (Canadian) to $15 range, Mr. Batchelor says.

CAW negotiators won the work for Ajax by agreeing to cut wages to $19 an hour from the $28 they were earning when they made seats for GM, and by shifting to a mix of defined-contribution and defined-benefit pension plans from a straight defined-benefit plan

Some workers view that as accepting concessions, Mr. Batchelor acknowledges. “I certainly take a different view of that. We were out of work so we went from a wage rate that used to be applied to the GM to zero, to nothing, to not having any work or potential work coming into the plant.”