Are craft beer and automation compatible? While the beverage industry long ago automated manufacturing and packaging operations, today’s craft breweries pride themselves on the personal touch. Is there a place for factory automation in small-batch brewing?   Over the past fifteen years or so, the American beer market has seen a rapid expansion of smallRead More

Larger manufacturers have employed manufacturing execution systems for years, but many small-to-medium-sized enterprises have yet to adopt such systems. Schleuniger’s Pete Doyon says that looking forward, even the smallest manufacturing companies will need to use them.   A manufacturing execution system (MES) is a software program that manages and monitors production work in a factory. The MES controlsRead More

When it comes to surviving in a hostile plant environment, few would argue against the superiority of the M12 connector system over the traditional RJ45 connector and socket, according to Dietmar Röring of Phoenix Contact.   Ethernet has become a viable alternative to fieldbus systems in industrial networks. Ethernet can also be combined with existingRead More

The primary purpose of a connector design review is to evaluate if the new product meets customer requirements. Here, Bill Garver of APEX Electrical Interconnection Consultants discusses the steps in the process and how to navigate them successfully.   There are usually several design reviews conducted throughout the new product development cycle for electrical connectors. These reviews occurRead More

Now that 100G networking equipment is being deployed in both local and wide area networks, it is time to seriously consider what lies beyond.   There are many research and development projects currently underway to answer the question of how high data rates will go, as well as what they will require of the hardware that makes them possible. TheRead More

While not yet pervasive in all sectors, fiber optic connectors are present and growing in all market sectors. In this excerpt from a recent Bishop & Associates market report, we look at the effects they’ve had on data center networks and what is still to come.   Ever since Bell Laboratories developed the first glassRead More

In a recent interview with John MacWilliams, the connector industry veteran shared his best guesses on technology and its effects on the workplace of 2045.   In 2045, your work day will begin in your home office. You may still have a dedicated corporate office space to work and meet in, but the majority of your workRead More

Once again, Apple is changing the way we communicate. The new Smart Connector, launched in the iPad Pro last November, utilizes two-way conductive communication that creates an instant connection.   Apple’s recently released iPad Pro is changing (once again) how we communicate. The built-in 12.9-inch Retina display is not the big news. The real excitementRead More

Mouser asked celebrity engineer Grant Imahara to help its team reach out to engineers around the world; now it’s built a worldwide engineering community on its site.     We want the engineer who once built a fighting robot named Deathblow on our team. We guess that many within Mouser Electronics feel the same. The distributorRead More

If you weren’t lucky enough to attend DesignCon, here’s your guide to the major product announcements made at the show.   DesignCon 2016 is in the books, and the show did not disappoint when it came to showcasing the latest technology. TE Connectivity TE Connectivity showed a range of industry-leading data communications connectivity solutions, withRead More

As the Internet of Things starts to take hold, how do people engage and interact with the plethora of new connected devices? ABI Research shares an infographic that maps out the significance of current trends in human-machine interface technology.   Machines and computing solutions are increasingly prevalent in our surroundings. People need to interact withRead More

It’s a dream that’s been around since at least the late 1930s, when the public imagination was sparked by the Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair. Take a look at how cars learn to be human, and why they’ll be better at it than we are.   The world is precariously close to seeingRead More