Manufacturers of all types account for approximately one-third of GDP and national employment. For every employee in the industrial base, four others are employed elsewhere based on that manufacturing output.

Customer Relationship Management software, or CRM as it is more commonly known, has traditionally been recognized as a sales tool.

Just how clear is your crystal ball? Over the past two years, The Doctor has had the good fortune of interacting with a large number of industrial clients and industry professionals from all over the globe.

A reader called me recently, and we had an enjoyable and useful conversation that needs to be shared here.

For those of us running industrial or manufacturing companies, the need for qualified workers might be greater than ever.

Caterpillar will open a casting facility in Greenwood County, S.C., in early 2019. The $13.5 million investment is expected to create 85 new jobs. The 103,000-square-foot facility will produce specialty castings used in a variety of engines and transmissions within the Caterpillar product line. It will also supplement the production of existing castings elsewhere in the Caterpillar production network.

HarbisonWalker International (HWI) celebrated the grand opening of its newly constructed monolithic refractories manufacturing plant in South Point, Ohio. HWI announced in February 2017 that it would invest $30 million to build a technologically advanced refractories plant. Ground was broken for the facility on June 8, 2017, and the plant began shipping products in spring 2018. The plant features state-of-the-art processes and technology and utilizes lean-manufacturing techniques throughout its operations to maximize material flow efficiency and production.

When my grandson was not admitted to several colleges this spring, I started wondering why, after all the wonderful awards and accolades he had received from the public school he attended. Then I reread “The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools.”

Zenith Cutter, a manufacturing company based in Loves Park, Ill., purchased an Ipsen TITAN H6 vacuum furnace with 2-bar gas quenching that will be used at its Metkraft facility in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The furnace has a graphite work zone measuring 36 x 48 x 36 inches with a 3,000-pound load capacity. It is capable of operating at temperatures of 1000-2400°F (538-1315°C) with ±10°F (±6°C) temperature uniformity. The furnace is also equipped with a closed-loop water system and Ipsen’s PdMetrics predictive-maintenance software.