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Friday, March 3, 2006 |
I see that Dana has filed Chapter 11. I'm especially sad because a Dana plant was one of my better customers in a previous life. Good people. Although I thought (selfishly) that they could have used another manufacturing engineer. I was helping on a CNC retrofit project on a bunch of old Warner & Swasey machines. The remark in the article is probably right on -- that is that we are in the midst of a major restructuring of the entire auto industry. Many good people will be hurt. I hope there is management with vision and courage somewhere to grab these opportunities and get something good going again.
Auto Supplier Dana Files for Bankruptcy Protection. Dana follows a lengthy list of other auto suppliers into bankruptcy court, all of which have been squeezed by cutbacks at G.M. and Ford. By JEREMY W. PETERS. [NYT > Business]
12:39:09 PM 
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And I thought the process systems market was hotly competitive these days. How about PLM? For the three-letter acronym challenged, PLM is product lifecycle management, an enhancement to computer aided design (CAD) designed to help companies manage product design and collaboration. I have to admit that, while I know what this is, I don't follow the comanies very closely. So when I receive a press release from a competitor, in this case UGS, stating that they are glad that their competitor, in this case Dassault Systemmes bought a small competitor in the PLM for midsize companies market (MatrixOne) I have to take notice. This must be a hotly contested space right now. Dassault says that this acquisition will help broaden its portfolio and reach new customers--and by the way only cost it one percentage point on profit margins for this year and next. UGS says that it knew that MatrixOne was for sale, but that 16 straight months of losses and no appreciable addition to its portfolio made it a poor acquisition target. Wow. What a zinger. Don't know that I've ever seen such a public response. Must be a sore spot somewhere. Any users out there have an opinion on this to enlighten, or enliven, this news?
7:44:48 AM
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Here's something for you designers to visualize lots of product enhancements around. Pressure Profile Systems Inc. has spent the past 10 years developing very small capacitance pressure sensors with digital outputs. These devices (the new one now commercially available to OEMs is called DigiTacts) are less than half a millimeter thick and provide pressure readings from 0 to 140kPa (0 to 20psi) in 0.7kPa (0.1psi) increments. Applications are expected to include both robotics, such as robotic hands, and human-machine interaction devices - where the reading of the pressure of the contact, not just that the contact was made, can add another dimension of information or control. Perhaps these could be used on machine applications where direct operator control to move the tool in small increments-say a polisher-would be useful.
7:33:40 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Gary Mintchell.
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