Software & Digital Solutions

In the 1987 movie "Wall Street," the archetypal corporate villain Gordon Gekko memorably argues that "greed is good"—and that the bottom line is the only good a dutiful company need pursue. Thirty years on, Ethisphere Institute has announced 124 companies spanning five continents, 19 countries and 52 industry sectors as the 2017 World's Most Ethical Companies honorees.

Sources tell Reuters that Plex Systems Inc, a privately held U.S. maker of software used to run manufacturing plants, is exploring a potential sale that it hopes will value it at more than $1 billion, including debt.

HEIDENHAIN's popular control magazine for customers and manufacturers is titled Klartext and is available as an app for mobile devices. This Klartext app was developed to increase worldwide circulation, make it available to a wider group, as well as provide easier and mobile access to a wide variety of industry-leading information about CNCs for the manufacturing industry as provided by HEIDENHAIN.

The U.S. manufacturing industry is rushing to embrace technology as a critical part of its processes and plans to make new technological investments in 2017, but barriers to Industry 4.0 adoption still exist, according to Automation Alley's 2017 Technology Industry Report.

One roadblock for parts makers to begin implementing Industrial Internet of Things technology is psychological: Implementation sounds like a big, time-consuming undertaking. It can be, of course. But a good way to start might be to take about 20 minutes and fire up Smart Attend, an all-in-one manufacturing-facility communication system from Smart Attend Inc.

CNC machine tools only generate revenue when they are producing good parts. The more good parts they make, the quicker the return on investment for machine tools. To maximize output, the total per-part machining time, including preparation, must be minimized.

Well-intentioned conservatism can actually be very bad for tool life, according to the second episode of The CNC Chef, a new monthly video series from Cutting Tool Engineering and Bob Warfield from CNCCookbook.

Mastercam 2018 Public Beta is now open to all currently maintained Mastercam customers. Shops all over the world, from small job shops to Fortune 100, get a chance to test-drive Mastercam 2018 before it is released and provide valuable feedback to help shape the final product.

Cerasis, a transportation-management company that works with the manufacturing industry, recently shared a list of manufacturing-technology trends that it says are growing in importance. Among them are green manufacturing, IIoT and computer analytics.

MVTec Software GmbH will issue the new MERLIC 3 software release on April 3. Along with the proven range of functions, the latest version also contains a number of new and improved features. These improvements make it even easier and more convenient to create machine vision applications.

In the debut episode of The CNC Chef, Bob Warfield from CNCCookbook.com cautions against slowing down your feed rate to avoid tool rubbing. A new monthly video series from Cutting Tool Engineering, The CNC Chef will address a variety of machining challenges in the coming months.

Forward-looking, funny, Cornell University mathematics major Carl Bass resigned his Autodesk post as CEO on Feb. 7, but he remains on the company's board.