Tronserve News

Like most senior high school students in China, 18-year-old Xu Yuting had planned to resume her studies earlier this year to prepare for upcoming college entrance exams. However, the spread of the coronavirus over the Lunar New Year holiday break has meant the postponement of school semesters, forcing students like Xu to stay at home.Rather than fall behind, Xu and many others have already begun learning full time again – only from home – in what may become the largest online teaching trial the country has seen.Traditional bricks and mortar schools in China are now exploring online education options as authorities postpone the new semester until the middle of this month or even into early March .“There’s no choice [that we have to teach online now],” said Jessie Xie, a 24-year-old high schoolteacher living in Chengdu city. As such, she needs to learn new skills such as speaking naturally in front of a camera, using a digital red pen during PowerPoint presentations, and engaging students via online written comments.Last week her school started coaching teachers on how to use Alibaba Group’s DingTalk to conduct live-streaming courses. “It’s not easy for some older teachers to learn how to do live-streaming courses. Yesterday one of my colleagues told me she still didn’t know how to use it [even after the coaching session],” Xie said. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.Physics teacher Zhao Chuanliang conducts online tuition for students at a high school in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, Feb. 2, 2020. As schools across the country are required to postpone the opening of the spring semester due to the coronavirus, online tuition has been promoted as an effective alternative. Photo: XinhuaPhysics teacher Zhao Chuanliang conducts online tuition for students at a high school in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, Feb. 2, 2020. As schools across the country are required to postpone the opening of the spring semester due to the coronavirus, online tuition has been promoted as an effective alternative. Photo: XinhuaPhysics teacher Zhao Chuanliang conducts online tuition for students at a high school in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, Feb. 2, 2020. As schools across the country are required to postpone the opening of the spring semester due to the coronavirus, online tuition has been promoted as an effective alternative. Photo: XinhuaLike most senior high school students in China, 18-year-old Xu Yuting had planned to resume her studies earlier this year to prepare for upcoming college entrance exams. However, the spread of the coronavirus over the Lunar New Year holiday break has meant the postponement of school semesters, forcing students like Xu to stay at home.Rather than fall behind, Xu and many others have already begun learning full time again – only from home – in what may become the largest online teaching trial the country has seen.Traditional bricks and mortar schools in China are now exploring online education options as authorities postpone the new semester until the middle of this month or even into early March .“There’s no choice [that we have to teach online now],” said Jessie Xie, a 24-year-old high schoolteacher living in Chengdu city. As such, she needs to learn new skills such as speaking naturally in front of a camera, using a digital red pen during PowerPoint presentations, and engaging students via online written comments.Last week her school started coaching teachers on how to use Alibaba Group’s DingTalk to conduct live-streaming courses. “It’s not easy for some older teachers to learn how to do live-streaming courses. Yesterday one of my colleagues told me she still didn’t know how to use it [even after the coaching session],” Xie said. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.Crying and punching bags may relieve coronavirus lockdown stress, Chinese officials saidChinese authorities are calling on people to stay at home to help reduce the spread of the virus through human contact. Health authorities in China announced on Tuesday that coronavirus fatalities had risen to 425 nationwide and that total confirmed cases had reached 20,438 as of Monday.The death toll in mainland China from the coronavirus has now exceeded that of the Sars epidemic in 2003.China’s Ministry of Education issued a statement last Thursday encouraging schools to use internet platforms as an alternative way of teaching students amid the suspension of the new semester. The ministry also plans to launch a national internet cloud classroom on February 17, providing a full range of teaching materials and courses for students from the first grade in junior school to the third grade of high school.The health crisis has put the spotlight on China’s online education market, which grew 25.7 per cent year on year in 2018 to 251.7 billion yuan (US$35.9 billion), according to iResearch Consulting Group. The previous forecast of annual growth of between 16 per cent to 24 per cent in the subsequent three to five years may now need to be revised upwards.For some students, the chance to study from home has other benefits. Xu, who lives in Zhejiang province, used to get up before 5:30am on school days but since starting online courses she gets two more hours sleep each morning. “I like online teaching because I have more freedom at home,” said Xu, who began her all-day courses via DingTalk this week.However, online teaching has its weaknesses compared to face-to-face learning. “My motivation to study is stronger when my classmates are around me and all working very hard,” she said. “Sometimes I zone out [when doing online courses].”The same applies for teachers. “I can see students taking notes and give them immediate feedback when I am teaching [face to face] at school but I can’t do this during online courses,” said Xie, who added that engagement between teacher and student online is “almost zero”.Some online teaching companies are offering their services for free during the outbreak. TAL Education announced on its official Weibo account free live-streaming courses for all grades to “minimise the influence on study due to the outbreak” while VIPKID, which specialises in teaching English online, said on Weirdo it would offer 1.5 million free online courses to children aged from four to 12.“The influx of users will force online education institutions to polish their teaching content and technical capabilities, improving the experience and efficiency of online learning,” said a VIPKID spokeswoman.As of Sunday, more than 220 education bureaus in 20 Chinese provinces had joined the free-of-charge DingTalk homeschool programme, covering over 20,000 primary and secondary schools and 12 million students, according to state media Xinhua.“Although my school tried online teaching a few years ago, we haven’t done it on this scale before. All of our teachers and students are now involved,” said Zheng Jinhong, a high school English teacher in her late thirties, who lives in Zhejiang province.CHINA’S TRADITIONAL SCHOOLS

Korean diagnostic kit developers are gearing up to fast track the detection of the new deadly coronavirus which is spreading at a breakneck speed in China and around the world, with some expecting to reach the commercial markets within this month.Kogene Biotech recently developed a gene diagnostic agent for the virus and submitted documents to Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) for emergency use assessment and listing (EUAL).The EUAL procedure was set up as an extraordinary process to allow the use of in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) products without formal approval during the epidemic. The new reagent was developed according to the detection method guidelines announced by the World Health Organization and KCDC. A company official said demand is rising from Japan and several countries in Europe and Southeast Asia where confirmed cases are reported, and actual orders and commitments are expected to be made after the upcoming Medlab Expo in Dubai this week.There are no proven preventive or therapeutic products for the 2019-Novel Coronavirus.TCM Biosciences already developed a TCM-Q Corona Ⅲ, a new diagnostic kit to test the virus infection. The company plans to file for the EUAL procedure within two to three weeks. A cotton swab is used to collect a sample from the patient’s nasal cavity for isolation of any ribonucleic acid from the coronavirus. TCM Biosciences said the internal development process took two to three months and it aims to file for EUAL by the third week of this month.PCL is in the process of commercializing its multiplex diagnostic kit to detect the virus. The new kit is expected to be used immediately upon approval by the government. PCL has a track record of developing a multiplex fast detection system for deadly viruses at the request of KCDC in 2017.Bioneer and LabGenomics are also speeding up efforts to develop diagnostic kits for the coronavirus based on their successful launches of similar kits during the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and Zika virus. Bioneer is preparing documents to apply for the EUAL procedure, while LabGenomics is anticipating commercialization after six to eight weeks.Efforts to develop diagnostic technology are also seen in the public sector. On Jan. 30, Center for Convergent Research of Emerging Virus Infection (CEVI) under Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology signed an agreement with Wells Bio, a subsidiary of Kosdaq-listed Accessbio, for joint development and commercialization of molecular and immunological diagnostics to detect a gene specific to the 2019-Novel Coronavirus and a virus antigen protein. CEVI is a partnership of eight state-funded research centers with an aim to develop technologies to identify, prevent, treat and contain high-risk new and mutated viruses.According to Biotech Policy Research Center, the worldwide IVD market that includes diagnostic kits for virus detection is expected to grow to $127 billion in 2022 from $42.7 billion in 2013.KOGENE BIOTECH

To better appreciate the future of manufacturing, I took a brief foray into my own family’s manufacturing past.It is a year of looking forward and backward at IndustryWeek. Looking forward because manufacturing—and manufacturers—must always keep their eyes peeled on what’s ahead in a world that grows ever more complicated. It’s all about the future. And if manufacturing is there or going there, so, too, are we at IndustryWeek.But looking back is important, as well. History can influence the present, and it provides lessons we shouldn’t forget as we forge ahead. It also provides an opportunity to look back on where we were and be alternately amazed, disbelieving or simply intrigued.For us, 2020 is the 50th anniversary of when we adopted the IndustryWeek name, although our tie with manufacturing extends much further back. In the first quarter of this year we also will name our 2019 IndustryWeek Best Plants Award winners. They will be our 30th class of honorees, so yet another milestone will be reached in 2020.It’s a notable year for us, so we will be doing plenty of looking back and forging ahead.With those thoughts in mind I took a small leap into my family’s manufacturing past last week. If you follow me at all, you know my forays into the past are not so unusual. For more than 15 years now, I’ve been saluting century young (as I like to call them) U.S. manufacturing companies in an ongoing series of online presentations. If you haven’t seen one of these, go to www.industryweek.com and search for The Definition of Durability: 10 Manufacturing Companies That Have Reached the Century Mark. That’s the latest one we’ve published, but it won’t be the last.I’m endlessly intrigued by the past and how it’s gotten us to where we are today.Given that intrigue, I dug deep into one of my closets recently and unearthed my great uncle’s portable tool chest. I don’t know exactly how he made a living, but I do know it was in manufacturing. He was already well retired by the time we held any real conversations, and my interest in his manufacturing background then was nil.I discovered his tool chest when he died and the family cleared out his house. What entranced me initially was not history, it was the beautiful quarter-sawn oak that fronted the box. It seemed entirely out of keeping with the prosaic purpose of the item: holding tools.Despite the pretty outside, it was a working man’s tool chest. I started pulling out drawers and quickly discovered a much-thumbed-through “Catalog No. 7” from the Lufkin Rule Co., Precision Tools Division. The briefest of research shows that this catalog dates from the late 1940s.I also discovered the company was founded­—or so Wikipedia tells me—by American Civil War veteran Edward Taylor Lufkin in Cleveland, Ohio. I’m a Clevelander and so was my great uncle upon his arrival from Poland, so the local tie gave me a kick.The green felt that once covered the bottom of each drawer in the tool chest is now blackened with time and dirt, but I did discover a small treasure trove of my uncle’s tools of precision: inside and outside calipers, a variety of gages, combination squares and several items I can’t identify.Many of those tools remain familiar 70 years on, albeit augmented now by automation and supported by software in many cases.Today’s manufacturing landscape is increasingly boosted by digital advances, and I’ll be writing more about it as the year unfolds. But this foray through my uncle’s toolbox also has me sharing a sentiment similar to one of my Twitter followers, who wrote, “I often wonder how our definition of craftsmanship has/will change as we become more automated. There’s something to be said about the technical skill it took to know how to use these tools.” Perhaps I’ll write about that, too.MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

The Transportation Security Administration said Sunday it has stopped allowing employees to use the China-owned video app TikTok to create social media posts for the agency after the Senate’s top Democrat raised concerns about potential national security issues.New York Senator Chuck Schumer sent a letter Saturday to TSA Administrator David Pekoske, months after news reports that the US government launched a national security review of the app, which is popular with millions of US teens and young adults. Schumer also cited a Department of Homeland Security policy prohibiting TikTok on agency devices.The TSA said in a statement Sunday that a “small number of TSA employees have previously used TikTok on their personal devices to create videos for use in TSA’s social media outreach, but that practice has since been discontinued”.In his letter, Schumer said national security experts have raised concerns about TikTok’s collection and handling of user data and personal information, locations and other content. He also noted in the letter that Chinese laws compel companies to cooperate with China’s government and intelligence collection.“Given the widely reported threats, the already-in-place agency bans, and the existing concerns posed by TikTok, the feds cannot continue to allow the TSA’s use of the platform to fly,” Schumer said in a statement.Over the past few months, the agency has posted a number of videos re-shared on other social media platforms such as Twitter, which have amassed hundreds of thousands of views.The agency said it never directed viewers to TikTok or published content directly to the platform, despite videos reposted on other TSA social media accounts having the TikTok logo in the bottom of the screen. The agency said it had an “active and award-winning presence on several social media platforms”.Some of the videos are musical parodies about what can and cannot be brought on an aircraft, while others advertise services like TSA’s expedited screening programme known as PreCheck.In one of the videos, a TSA spokeswoman with Nutella spread on her face is showing different containers of the chocolate-hazelnut spread to detail which one can be brought in carry-on luggage.SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A former Samsung employee who spent nearly a year protesting his firing by living atop a 25-meter (82-foot) traffic camera tower in South Korea’s capital was helped back down Friday after the business giant apologized over his plight. Kim Yong-hee, 60, waved a banner with a Samsung logo and a protest slogan while a rescue worker on a fire-truck ladder escorted him down from his perch along a street near a Samsung Electronics office in Seoul. Kim was fired from the company in 1995 over what he says were his attempts to organize a labor union. Kim's decision to end his aerial protest after 354 days came weeks after billionaire Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong, currently on trial over corruption charges, vowed to end decades of union-busting practices at the group. In its apology, Samsung said it should have done more to ease Kim’s “pain and agony,” which it said was caused by “conflicts with the company amid the process of his labor movements following his dismissal.” The company did not clearly acknowledge Kim’s claim that he lost his job at Samsung’s now-defunct aerospace unit because he tried to start a union. Activists representing Kim said in a statement that Kim sees Samsung’s apology as redeeming his honor. Neither Kim nor Samsung disclosed the details of their discussions and whether he would be financially compensated or reinstated the company. MANUFACTURING.NET

Is Big Tech headed for a big breakup?The U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are moving to inspect Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple over their aggressive business practices, and the House Judiciary Committee has reported an unprecedented antitrust probe, promising "a top-to-bottom review of the market power held by giant tech platforms."On top of that, at least two 2020 presidential hopefuls have indicated support for breaking up some of technology's biggest players amid problems they are becoming too powerful.Experts say breakups are unlikely in the short term, and Rep. David Cicilline, the Rhode Island Democrat who leads the subcommittee pursuing the House investigation, called such measures a "last resort." But even without that, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple could confront new restrictions on their power.Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple declined to comment on the investigations.Here's a look at the cases that could be brought against them and what their defenses could be.FACEBOOKWith 2.4 billion users, $56 billion in revenue last year and a name that's synonymous with social media, Facebook is unquestionably big. But is it an illegal, competition-crushing monopoly?Federal regulators are currently investigating the company's privacy practices. But the antitrust question has been rumbling in the background, with critics calling for spinning off WhatsApp and Instagram. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has asked for breaking up Big Tech, as has Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook. Former Vice President Joe Biden has said that he is open to the idea.Critics believe a breakup is needed because Facebook can squash competitors either by buying them or using its enormous resources to mimic services they offer — as it's done with Snapchat, for example.Facebook executives have been calling broadly for regulation, though nothing that comes close to breaking it up. In a recent statement, the company's vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said Facebook "accepts that with success comes accountability. But you don't enforce accountability by calling for the breakup of a successful American company." CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called for "new rules" in four areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy, and data portability.Facebook has also stressed that it has competitions in messaging and digital communication, including Apple and Google.New York University law professor Eleanor Fox mentioned that because antitrust law focuses on companies that raise prices too much, and Facebook is free, it will be a challenging to break up the business. And Facebook commands less than a quarter of worldwide digital advertising, well behind Google.Warren, however, has laid out plans for legislation that targets companies with more than $25 billion of annual revenue. It would regulate their capacity to grow and force parts of their business to operate as separate entities.GOOGLEAs Google turns out to be a leading mail provider, search engine and advertising platform, federal regulators are starting to wonder if it needs to be knocked down a bit.Critics say Google's dominance in search has allowed it to squash rivals — notably because Google can show its own products above competitors' or feature its own ads prominently.Google might argue it doesn't have a duty to do business with its rivals at all — an argument that other companies have made when faced with equivalent challenges, said Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director for Open Markets Institute, which advocates breaking up monopolies.It's Google's technology and Google can make use of it as it wishes, goes one line of reasoning.Google has also faced scrutiny over the practices it uses to get its search and other products featured on smartphones. Some say Google imposes way too many self-serving regulations on smartphone makers who use Google's Android operating system.But Google will probably simply argue that Android users like Google products and want them on their phones.Under existing laws, it is challenging to make the case that Google has monopoly power, "even though I think a lot of people think it's quite plain," Fox said.APPLESince its opening in 2008, Apple's groundbreaking app store gives customers prompt access to services that entertain, enlighten and engage. But it is also a place where Apple deals with all the access and sets commission rates for subscriptions and other purchases made through the apps.If it opens an investigation, the Justice Department is undoubtedly to focus on whether Apple is abusing its veto and pricing power to throttle and gouge its competition. The commissions it collects are also the subject of a consumer lawsuit that the Supreme Court recently cleared to proceed.App makers routinely allege that they are blocked because Apple wants people to use its own services. In a recent example, various makers of apps for managing the amount of time kids can use their iPhones say they were kicked out of the store not long after Apple introduced its own screen-management controls.Apple says it for the most part blocks only apps with buggy software or features that invade users' privacy. The company likens its policies to merchants making a decision what products to carry. Apple also says its store includes apps that compete with its own products, including Google Maps and Google's Chrome browser.Also under criticism is the 30 percent cut that Apple pockets on new subscription sign-ups during the first year and a 15 percent slice for renewals. The app store is predicted to develop about $16 billion in revenue this year.Apple says the commissions cover costs for running the app store, including hiring people to review apps.Antitrust regulators could try to impose requirements that lower Apple's commissions or, in a worst-case scenario, force it to spin off the app store. The latter option, though, could hurt consumers by making iPhones and other Apple products more cumbersome to use.Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives likened a breakup to "a complex and almost impossible Siamese twin operation."AMAZONFrom an online bookseller, Amazon has developed into a gigantic e-commerce player with its tentacles in everything from web hosting to streaming video to groceries.The European Union's antitrust chief has been carrying out an early-stage probe into whether Amazon is using data to gain an edge on third-party merchants, who are both its customers and rivals. Italy has been looking into whether Amazon abused its dominance by offering preferential treatment to companies that used Amazon's own delivery-management services.Cicilline, the congressman, said Amazon has identified bestselling products elsewhere, rolled out replicas under its own brand and then steered customers to its own products over those of its rivals. When Warren tweeted in April that big tech companies like Amazon should be broken up, Amazon tweeted back: "Walmart is much larger."Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos made an equivalent case in a recent letter to shareholders: "Amazon today continues to be a small player in global retail. We represent a low single-digit percentage of the retail market, and there are much larger retailers in every country where we operate. And that's largely because nearly 90 percent of retail remains offline, in brick and mortar stores."But Amazon does dominate online. Market research company eMarketer expects Amazon to account for 52 percent of all online sales in the U.S. this year, up from 48 percent last year.This article is originally posted on manufacturing.net

Every manufacturer wants to escape unanticipated downtime in the plant, and that begins with proactively checking machines to keep them up and running. On that basis, technology suppliers are offering up plenty of diagnostic applications especially for machine maintenance. But many of the offerings available are point solutions that are too thin in focus, or they are too broad and collect too much of the wrong kind of data, which doesn't provide a way for technicians to pinpoint the root cause of a potential problem.Augury, a company located in Israel and the U.S., is changing the conversation around machine health by combining advanced sensor technology, artificial intelligence, and reliability expertise to provide accurate and actionable insights for a total ecosystem of production line assets. In accordance with Augury, every machine has a specialized acoustic fingerprint. By listening thoroughly and applying advanced analytics, manufacturers and machine builders can anticipate faults before they occur.“We are a machine health solution that makes sure machines that matter are always running for our customers,” said Jonathan Biagiotti, product marketing manager at Augury. “And the way we do this is by vibration analysis, temperature data analysis, and magnetic field data analytics.”Augury was started in 2011 by Saar Yoskovitz and Gal Shaul. Shaul was working for a medical device company at the time, and would have to fly out to customer locations to solve equipment that could have been corrected remotely with software and acoustics, the two realized. So they collaborated to create Augury.In the beginning, the company developed a portable hand-held diagnostic tool with capabilities of Category IV vibration analysis. Recently, leveraging the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and AI, Augury rolled out a product called Halo, a wireless platform that gives real-time and continuous advanced diagnostics that alerts personnel to even the slightest change in a machine’s health status, and delivers a detailed malfunction analysis.“We give actionable insights to customers,” Biagiotti explained. “It’s not just, ‘you have high vibration,’ rather, ‘you have a problem on the drive end of motor which is a moderate misalignment problem, and we recommend you laser align the machine.’ It is specific and actionable and the people reading the results don’t have to be a vibrational analyst.”That’s because Augury has certified Cat III and IV vibration analysts on staff who tag data and find out what the fault means. They are available to the customer as part of a turnkey service that includes reliability consulting.Augury experts gather information on the magnetic field - one thing the company has pioneered, Biagiotti said. Plus, the algorithms are more sophisticated than what is presently out there for machine learning applications. “We are not just looking at vibration, but dozens of calculated values…The signals give an early heads-up when things change and detect anomalies based on past behavior.”The objective is to check out the health of the system to improve the overall performance at the plant as well as the larger supply chain. Augury executives recognize that machine health is about solving a bigger problem.As an example, a beer manufacturer obtains a pump because they need it to move beer from one place to another, but they are more interested in the performance of the pump vs. the maintenance of it. To that end, the company gave the example of a beer bottler that saved three hours of downtime, 180,000 bottles of production loss and $360,000 in retail value by knowing a motor was going to fail, before it did so – thanks to Augury’s cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering.Halo has web and mobile dashboards that can be looked at on a PC, laptop, iPhone or Android providing KPIs and plant performance metrics. The company can also push text messages and e-mails to people to alert them if there's a change to the status of a machine. Halo can also integrate with a company’s existing work order management system or computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).Augury works with manufacturers in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, CPG, water and wastewater treatment and power industries, and forms partnerships with OEMs.AUTOMATIONWORLD

To make sure consistency, repeatability, quality and compliance with regulations, many companies employ rigorous testing and measurement processes. Kraus automation technology (KAT), specializes in delivering tailored testing systems for life-span, fatigue and material tests. To offer testing systems which meet the needs of their various customer base, KAT use National Instruments' LabView software to create custom user interfaces for engineers.  Whilst LabView offers the gain of a graphical address to programming which visualizes hardware configuration, measurement data, and debugging, the testing machine's PLC and the measurement and testing applications had to be engineered on their own. The result was a time-consuming process which demanded specific expertise.  Reduced engineering costs  KAT turned to Bosch Rexroth to provide a solution which removed the need for its engineers to work two programming environments - a move which would significantly reduce engineering costs. Rexroth's Open Core Engineering solution makes it possible to seamlessly integrate, model and automate all drive and control functionalities into the LabVIEW environment, providing full programming control without creating separate PLC code.  A specific library, which can be imported into LabVIEW, enables engineers to directly access the control functionalities of Rexroth's IndraMotion MLC and ILC systems. It produces the programmer with more than 550 virtual instruments and controls within a single, familiar software environment. KAT now handles the whole engineering function for the jog mode, speed tests, positioning, sensors and actuators in LabVIEW, with no time-consuming PLC programming involved.  Faster development for faster time to market Before working with the Rexroth team, KAT engineers had to program I/O queries and axis motions on their own and transfer them into a joint machine program throughout all of their development phases. As well as being time-consuming, the additional programming and commissioning gave rise to the additional probability of errors. Using LabVIEW and the Open Core Interface technology, combined with Bosch Rexroth's modern automation solutions and drive technology, specific movements can now be carried out on KAT's measuring and testing machines even without any PLC programming.  Stefan Beisendorf from KAT explains, "Open Core Engineering grants us to reduce the number of interfaces. This is efficient, minimizes the risk of errors and helps to make resource planning more flexible."   As well as improving the speed of improvement, the full machine workflow can now be mapped in LabVIEW, which further speeds up the commissioning phase. For KAT, this has resulted in huge time savings, specifically since troubleshooting can also concentrate on one instead of two programming environments. This considerable time saving and improvement in process efficiency has also enabled KAT to bring innovative and complex products to market much more quickly and inexpensively than before - without compromising on quality.This article is originally posted on manufacturingtomorrow.com

WASHINGTON, May 28 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at increasing the ability of the government to regulate social media platforms. The executive order targets companies granted liability protection through Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, according to a report by cnbc.com. Under the statute, large social media companies cannot be sued for much of the content posted by others using their sites. The order would push the Federal Communications Commission to set new rules on some websites' protections under Section 230. It would also encourage the Federal Trade Commission to take action against companies that engage in "deceptive" acts of communication, and it would form a working group of state attorneys general to review relevant state laws.The executive order came two days after Twitter, for the first time, added warning links to two of Trump's tweets, inviting readers to "get the facts." The tweets made a series of claims about state-led mail-in voting services, an issue Trump has railed against in recent weeks, cnbc.com reported. The labels, when clicked, led Twitter users to a page describing Trump's claims as "unsubstantiated." XINHUANET 

As more 5G deployments become realities, it will be the numerous private network deployments that ultimately serve as the business cases for the wireless technology’s potential, especially for today’s more progressive manufacturers and industrial environments. Using the 5G-ready Ericsson Industry Connect, ABB Power Grids is integrating more digital solutions into its transformer factory in Ludvika, Sweden to increase productivity and performance. The project represents the first in Sweden to commercially use the latest version of the Ericsson Industry Connect 5G-ready network in a fully operating manufacturing site. The project is taking part leveraging a phased approach. As an initial step, the Ludvika factory is connecting essential tools such as cordless screwdrivers as part of its digitalization process. Further on, handheld computers will also be connected in order to improve connectivity quality and efficiency compared to their current solution. Erik Josefsson, head of advanced industries at Ericsson, tells IndustryWeek, “The factory hopes to benefit from 5G by having a dedicated shop floor wireless network that is secure and stable enough to connect live production machines without being limited to cabling,” he says. “The key benefits are increasing efficiency by getting data from machines and tools which before was not possible or too challenging and attracting as well as retaining talent by having the latest technical infrastructure that future proofs production.” The project is a collaboration between communications service provider Telia, system integrator AFRY (formerly ÅF Pöyry), ABB Power Grids and Ericsson. The collaboration shows how ecosystem partners come together to enable digital transformation for smart manufacturing. The partners have deployed, integrated and managed the 5G-ready dedicated cellular network to enable flexible, efficient and improved production quality. "We are reviewing remote management of different processes to improve security, efficiency, and quality aspects. Another example is the optimization and remote monitoring of our drying facilities, which operates 24/7 and requires monitoring," says Tobias Hansson, Site manager, ABB Power Grids in Ludvika and Senior Vice President, Power Transformers in Europe at ABB. "It is important to continue to be a pioneer. For more than a century, ABB has delivered innovations that have changed the world. I think that it is vital that we invest in new technology to develop our business." According to Magnus Leonhardt, Innovation and Business Director, Telia Sweden, "With a dedicated network, ABB Power Grids now have access to a robust and secure infrastructure to support critical data streams between different systems in a connected factory. It is also an innovation platform to test new technologies with partners. We are now discussing how to connect more of the production in the factory to accelerate the company’s digital transformation." The continued deployment of LTE and 5G are create new possibilities for industrial. By deploying a dedicated network in a fully operational factory, ABB Power Grids have access to a fast, robust, and secure network solution which is required for secure data intelligence. With this deployment, the Ericsson Industry 4.0 ecosystem is rapidly expanding with over 30 official device partners, nine application partners and seven system integrators to date. The global partnership between Ericsson and ABB extends across research, business and factory connectivity. INDUSTRYWEEK