One of the most powerful images from nature has also become a powerful metaphor—the wave.

This past year has been ripe with massive disruptions. In fact, 94% of manufacturers surveyed say demand has significantly changed as a result of COVID-19. 

It can be said that 2020 has been a year of paradigm shifts in both our personal and professional lives. Friends, families, and co-workers have had to make big changes to stay connected; so too has the world of Quality Management System (QMS) audits.

Before January 2020, if you had asked an organization whether they had considered a pandemic as a risk to the organization, most would have answered no. 

Since the rise of additive manufacturing (AM) in the 2010s, many businesses across the world are now looking at this method of manufacturing to see where it can add benefits across the supply chain.

A merchant has a fox, a rabbit, and a head of lettuce and sits on the edge of a river. He has a small raft capable of carrying only himself and one item at a time, but without his supervision, the fox will eat the rabbit, and the rabbit will eat the lettuce. 

The U.S. manufacturing industry’s skilled labor shortage has been widely reported in the past decade. Millions of jobs became vacant due to the retirement of baby boomers and economic expansion.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our daily lives on an unprecedented global scale. The need to alter our way of life to try to mitigate and contain the virus has made us press pause on everything we take for granted, from visiting family and friends to travelling to work and business continuity.

Industry 4.0 represents the fourth and newest phase of the Industrial Revolution, one that is centered around interconnectivity, automation, machine learning, and real-time data. 

Over the past decade manufacturers have increasingly turned to flexible, customizable automation platforms to meet the demands of high mix/low volume orders and ensure their long-term survival in a competitive manufacturing environment.