Posts By: Rebecca Haden

Supply Chains and the Labor Shortage

A recent global survey of companies in the supply chain space found that 76% are facing labor shortages — and 37% say “high” or “extreme” levels of labor shortage. 88% said these shortages were affecting their customer service performance. 91% said heir logistics partners were being affected by labor shortages, too. More than half identified… Read more »

Challenge the Status Quo

Lapsis is a science fiction film about a world where human beings compete with robots directly for gigs. Not in an abstract oh-will-the-robots-take-our-jobs sort of way, but in a world where robots come up behind you as you work and steel your spot. The film intends to make a point about gig work and about… Read more »

Rexroth Error Codes: The F Codes

Rexroth error codes show up when there is a problem with your Rexroth motion control systems. Don’t panic! These codes are there to help you. The overview Rexroth error codes have one letter and four numbers in the string. Often, the first item in the code is “F.” That means it’s a fault. A code… Read more »

Status, Stigma, and Robots

Industrial robots are not usually like human beings in any way. They’re not distinguishable as having a race, class, or caste. It doesn’t usually matter what color they are, and they’re not subservient or dominating — in fact, these questions don’t even make sense for industrial robots. For service robots, social robots, and even some… Read more »

Cold Winter Temperatures and Servos

Your factory is probably taking advantage of the cold temperatures to keep your servo cold and functioning properly. After all, why pay to keep things air-conditioned when you don’t need to? The problem with relying on unconditioned air to keep your servo drives and servomotors cool is that the moisture or lack of moisture in… Read more »

Shipping Problems

Supply chain disruptions were major problems during the pandemic. Then the war in Ukraine affected supply chains. Now we’re seeing problems in the major shipping canals of the world. In particular, the Suez Canal, which accounts for 10% of global shipping, and the Panama Canal, which carries 5%. Trade through the Suez Canal has dropped… Read more »

MSDs and Manufacturing

Musculoskeletal disorders, or MSDs,  are the most common workplace injury, costing the nation $17 billion a year. Accordingly, the National Safety Council created the MSD Solutions Lab. The lab supports the Council’s three aspects of MSD solutions: MSD risk reduction innovation and collaboration safety culture Companies were asked to take a pledge to uphold these… Read more »

The ROI of Workplace Wellness Programs

Workplace wellness programs deliver $4.00 in increased productivity for every $1.00 pent. Or they do nothing. Ir depends which study you read. The programs are ineffective Harvard Medical School shared the findings of a highly scientific controlled trial of a workplace wellness program compared workers who participated in a wellness program with those who did… Read more »

Indradrive Error E2061

There are so many Indradrive error messages that you probably can’t memorize them all — especially since Rexroth doesn’t break down enough to give you much experience with any of those codes. E2061 might be worth memorizing, though. E2061 is the prewarning for device overload. It means that the load for the drive has exceeded… Read more »

Low-cost Robots

Researchers at Stanford have built a robot that does a pretty impressive job of cooking. ALOHA (stands for “a low-cost open-source hardware teleoperation system for bimanual operation”) can do a better job than a lot of humans, and it only cost $32,000. It even cleans up after itself. ALOHA uses off-the-shelf parts, 3-D printed hardware,… Read more »