OMEP Works to Grow Manufacturing Businesses
In anticipation of Manufacturing Day, we reached out to Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership (OMEP), a partner in the program and a leading resource in manufacturing consulting in Oregon. The following was written and submitted by Mary Craighead, Senior Consultant at OMEP; learn more about innovation and research that OMEP is taking part in by reading below.
Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership (OMEP) is a results-oriented manufacturing consulting resource. We support small to mid-sized manufacturers holistically with an integrated focus on three core areas: strategy and financials, operational excellence, and workforce performance. We’re a 501(c)3 organization that is Oregon’s arm of the national NIST MEP network.
We’re currently gearing up for the 2020 Oregon Manufacturers’ Summit, which will take place in Tigard in March 2020. We strive to make this the go-to manufacturing event of the year, and we’ll host 200+ Oregon manufacturers gathering to share best practices and learn from experts as well as each other. In the spirit of continuous improvement, this year’s format will be brand new. We’ve been hard at work developing a super hands-on simulation game that we can’t wait to share! We’ll also focus on industry trends and analysis, and host small group manufacturing leader talks; Springfield’s own Rosboro LLC, will share their approach to building a continuous improvement culture, as well as some of the lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Our clients rely on us to bring options and information to those weekly sessions, which makes it imperative for us to stay on top of tools, trends, and technology. Over the past year, we’ve been working with Manufacturing USA’s RAPID Institute to experiment with the manufacturing of modular chemical process intensification equipment. These modules allow for a chemical plant to radically reduce its physical footprint, significantly improve its safety, and consume fewer environmental resources. We partnered with Metal Products Co. to help support this research; they were an invaluable asset in building prototype parts and helping us to understand how to work with special high performance alloys like Inconel 625, which is used in chemical processing equipment.
Speaking of technology and innovation, there’s been a lot of media coverage in recent months regarding automation – especially in the context of a very tight labor market. Oregon’s unemployment rate has maintained a 40-year low; meanwhile, our manufacturing sector employment growth since 2010 has significantly outpaced that of the nation. This growth is compounded by the fact that Oregon’s manufacturing workforce is aging at a faster rate than the labor pool at large. This means that in addition to new jobs, experts forecast an even larger amount of vacancies due to retirement.
So what about automation? Automation is already here. It’s no Jetson-age city in the sky science fiction. Manufacturers of all sizes are using technology to help their existing workforce work more safely, focus on the more interesting parts of their jobs, and make smart, data-driven decisions. We have a client whose primary material is incredibly sensitive to its environment; they’re outfitting each material cart with smart sensors to track and record temperature and humidity and send push notifications to that employee when the material needs to be decommissioned. This will free that employee who might otherwise be consumed with tracking to perform another value-added task for much of the day while still performing that critical task of maintaining material quality.
What about rote, monotonous tasks? The ones notorious for causing workplace injuries over time, or where the job is dirty or boring and seems to have frequent turnover. Enter collaborative robots – or cobots. These guys don’t require an engineer to program, and they’re designed to work safely alongside their human counterparts, which means they’re fast but not dangerously so and don’t require caging. While we don’t have any clients using cobots yet, OEMP owns two that we can use to experiment on-site and have the ability to rent more for trial runs. Keep your eyes peeled for a Cobots and Coffees demo coming to the Eugene/Springfield area this coming spring!
