Business Facilities: New Program Aims To Strengthen Kansas’ Manufacturing Supply Chain. “An online manufacturer database and connectivity platform, CONNEX™ Kansas is provided as a free resource for Kansas manufacturers. The platform is designed to allow manufacturers in Kansas to connect with each other, find local and domestic suppliers, explore production capabilities and manage their supply chain.”
Dayton 24/7: Ohio launches website to highlight products made in the Buckeye State. “To kick off Small Business Week, the Ohio Department of Development and Tourism just launched a new website highlighting products made in the Buckeye State. The page lists nearly 800 companies in categories like apparel, snack foods, coffee and décor.”
The Hindu: Botanical Survey of India’s collection of rare paintings, dyes, fabrics and type specimens to go public. “Apart from botanical paintings, the digital archive also displays rare natural dyes, fabrics and type specimens (the first collection that’s used for describing a plant). Each one of these rare holdings has its own story. Thomas Wardle, a Scottish businessman, whose business in silk dyes wasn’t doing well, visited the industrial section of the Indian Museum and, in one year, came up with about 3,500 samples of dye patterns extracted from 64 Indian plants. The 15 volumes of Wardle’s Specimen of Fabrics Dyed with Indian Dyes, published in 1886 and preserved with the BSI, has also been digitised.”
New York Times: Maker of Popular Covid Test Told Factory to Destroy Inventory. “One of the leading producers of rapid tests purged supplies and laid off workers as sales dwindled. Weeks later, the U.S. is facing a surge in infections with diminished capacity.”
Nikkei Asia: COVID slows Apple and Google production shift away from China . “Recent outbreaks of COVID-19 are disrupting plans by Apple, Google, Amazon and their key suppliers to shift production from China to Vietnam as governments tighten border controls to contain outbreaks of new variants of the virus. Google’s upcoming Pixel 6 smartphone range, for example, will be built in China even though the company had planned to move production of the handsets to northern Vietnam early last year, four people familiar with the matter said.”
New York Times: Covid Vaccines Produced in Africa Are Being Exported to Europe. “South Africa is still waiting to receive the overwhelming majority of the 31 million vaccine doses it ordered from Johnson & Johnson. It has administered only about two million Johnson & Johnson shots. That is a key reason that fewer than 7 percent of South Africans are fully vaccinated — and that the country was devastated by the Delta variant. At the same time, Johnson & Johnson has been exporting millions of doses that were bottled and packaged in South Africa for distribution in Europe, according to executives at Johnson & Johnson and the South African manufacturer, Aspen Pharmacare, as well as South African government export records reviewed by The New York Times.”
BBC: Nike trainer output at key factory hit by Covid outbreak. “Production at some of Nike’s largest plants in Vietnam has been disrupted as Covid has spread through factories. The company refused to comment on whether store supplies would see shortages as a result of the outbreak. About half of Nike’s shoes were manufactured in Vietnam in the last financial year, so this will mean challenges for its supply chain.”
The Reporter: Glass giant celebrates St Helens history with online heritage hub. “Historic images chart Pilkington UK’s almost 200-year history at the forefront of glass making and the lives of those who worked there, from the three wealthy founding families, to the apprentices and production line workers. The hub recognises the seminal contributions of Sir Alistair Pilkington, with his industry-shaping invention of the Float Glass process in 1958; now the world standard for high-quality flat glass manufacture.”
Analytics India: All You Need To Know About Google’s Visual Inspection AI. “The newly launched Visual Inspection AI is a purpose-built tool to help manufacturers and related workers and businesses to inspect and reduce product defects and decrease quality control costs. Powered by Google Cloud Platform’s computer vision technology, Visual Inspection AI goes beyond the traditional methods of supporting manufacturing quality control through its general-purpose AI product, AutoML.”
ZDNet: Google rolls out AI-powered visual inspection tool for manufacturers. “Google Cloud on Tuesday launched Visual Inspection AI, a new tool to help manufacturers identify defects in products before they’re shipped. It’s the latest move from Google to win more customers in the manufacturing space, one of the key verticals the cloud company is targeting.”
Weirton Daily Times: Weirton museum to unveil online WSX Bulletin archive. “As part of local observations of West Virginia Day, the Weirton Area Museum and Cultural Center will officially unveil the new online archive of the Weirton Steel Employees Bulletin. The unveiling will be held in-person and livestreamed on the museum’s Facebook page at 10:45 a.m., Saturday.”
Radio Bulgaria: Digital archive to store history of Bulgaria’s industrial heritage. “Factories, railway facilities, bridges, slaughterhouses, showing the history of rapid industrial development in the first decades of the 20th century, are often left to destruction these days or they ‘accidentally’ burn down. To preserve the story of these valuable architectural specimens, a team of historians has decided to develop a digital archive and a mobile application dedicated to the industrial heritage of Bulgaria.”
Gas Compression Magazine: Illustrated Online Database Of Rotating Machinery Terms. “More than 2500 words and 200+ illustrations make [Kane’s Rotating Machinery Dictionary] one of the most comprehensive digital resources for students and experts alike to gain a better understanding of the products, practices, and technologies utilized in the rotating machinery industry.” Free to access, surprisingly.
Fibre2Fashion: German textile fair Heimtextil launches online materials library. “The curators of the new materials library are London-based futures- research agency, FranklinTill. The Future Materials Library 2021 offers materials pioneers a platform and presents a first-class mix of economically proven and revolutionary developments. FranklinTill has organised the materials in four themes; Regenerative Crops, Remade Fibres, Harvesting Waste Streams, and Sustainable Colour, according to a press release by Messe Frankfurt.”
New York Times: U.S. Taps Johnson & Johnson to Run Troubled Vaccine Plant. “The Biden administration on Saturday put Johnson & Johnson in charge of a troubled Baltimore manufacturing plant that ruined 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine and moved to stop the plant from making another vaccine by AstraZeneca, senior federal health officials said.”
