Setting a New Bearing for the American Market
by Peter Easton 

In a plan to strengthen its position in the American market, SKF of Goteborg, Sweden, has signed an agreement to acquire PEER Bearing Co. and its manufacturing operations in China and Thailand. PEER manufactures mainly deep groove ball bearings and tapered roller bearings.

PEER is based in Waukegan, Ill., and sells primarily to North American customers. In 2007, sales were almost $100 million; it has approximately 1,400 employees. The price of the sale was not disclosed.

In acquiring PEER, SKF is seeking to strengthen its presence in the North American market in certain segments not currently served by SKF, such as lawn and garden and mechanical power transmission. PEER will continue to operate as a stand-alone business, acting independently on the market under its existing brand, PEER.

PEER’s manufacturing plants are located in Xinchang and Changshan, China, and in Rayong, Thailand.

Smart Material Handling Systems
by Peter Easton 

A supplier of smart material-handling assembly conveyor systems and software-driven warehouse and distribution systems said that it has received orders for automated conveyors from two global manufacturers of vehicles.

The company, Paragon Technologies Inc. in Easton, Pa., said the orders, placed for its SI Systems brand, totaled approximately $900,000. Paragon will design, build, and install the automated conveyor systems. One system will be used to assemble cabs for large off-road vehicles, and the other for assembly of a line of new fuel-efficient engines for automobiles and light trucks. Other contract terms were not disclosed.

The system design will incorporate the company’s ergonomically designed carriers that lift, lower, and rotate fixtured vehicle frames during the assembly process. According to Paragon, they are designed to reduce worker fatigue and increase manufacturing productivity. The systems will be installed in new factories currently under construction, Paragon said.

The Snail Express
by Jean Thilmany 

Call it true snail mail.

Researchers at Bournemouth University in Poole, England, are challenging the societal obsession with e-mail speed. As part of a project they call RealSnailMail, they’re using live snails as a means of sending e-mail.

Visitors to the project’s Web site, www.realsnailmail.net, can now send an electronic message via snail. No guarantee the receiver will get the e-mail in a timely fashion, if ever, but that’s the point of the project, said its coordinators, Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, university computer animation and computer art fellows.

Message carrier: Can sending e-mail by snail help us to “take time instead of lose it”?

“One thing technology promises us is speed, acceleration, more of everything in less time,” Smith said. “Culturally, we seem obsessed with immediacy. Time is not to be taken, but crammed to the bursting point.

“Normally, when we communicate by e-mail, the physical endeavors of our fingertips are followed by an uninterrupted digital transportation until our thoughts are emitted through the pixels of the recipient’s screen,” he added. “All we’re doing here is creating a physical and biological interruption to this flow, but we hope by doing this it may also interrupt, for one small moment, our understanding of communication, allowing us to explore notions of time. It may even enable us to take time rather than lose it.”

For the project, each snail is fitted with a tiny capsule that holds a radio-frequency identification, or RFID, chip. As a snail passes within range of an electronic reader positioned within its tank, e-mail attaches itself to the chip. The e-mail message will be carried by a snail’s RFID chip and will be forwarded when the gastropod passes close to a second reader, Isley said.

Under normal circumstances, e-mail travels at the speed of light—some 700 million miles per hour—and arrives within seconds of being sent. RealSnailMail messages travel at about 0.03 mile per hour and could take days, weeks, or even months to arrive, if they arrive at all, Isley said.

Visitors to the Web site will be able to send and then monitor the progress of their e-mail, as snails named Muriel, Austin, Cecil, and their companions go to work.

Isley and Smith are part of the university’s National Center for Computer Animation. To develop the hardware and network components for the RealSnailMail project, they’ve teamed with Tim Orman and Andrew Watson, senior lecturers in the university’s school of design, engineering, and computing.

Manufacturer Acquires 3 Companies in a Week
by Harry Hutchinson 

A company based in Sweden that supplies measurement systems acquired three companies, all during the last week of June. The company, Hexagon AB in Nacka Strand, Sweden, also bought one of its U.S. distributors earlier in the month.

On June 27, Hexagon said it had acquired all outstanding shares in m&h Group, which consists of the three German companies: m&h Inprocess Messtechnik GmbH, m&h Inprocess International Trading GmbH, and m&h Inspect GmbH. According to Hexagon, m&h is a leading manufacturer of machine tool probes, including related software and services, and the group has a strong technology and intellectual property base.

That followed a June 25 announcement that Hexagon AB had bought all outstanding shares in Messtechnik Wetzlar GmbH of Wetzlar, Germany, a leading developer of software for quality control of complex mechanical parts, such as gears and turbine blades. Messtechnik Wetzlar also carries out turnkey projects for material handling metrology solutions.

On the 23rd, Hexagon acquired a Swedish software company, Viewserve AB of Stockholm. Viewserve offers a Web-based GPS fleet management system to the construction market.

Earlier in the month, a subsidiary in the U.S., Hexagon Metrology Inc., bought a distributor that handles several of the company’s product lines. The distributor, Advanced Metrology Solutions of Dayton, Ohio, covers a territory of nine states from Michigan to Florida.

Hexagon is in a variety of measurement businesses. In the quality assurance area, it owns a number of brands, including Brown & Sharpe, CogniTens, Leica Geosystems, ROMER, Sheffield, PC-DMIS, DEA, Leitz, and TESA.

According to its Web site, Hexagon has about 8,000 employees (probably more now) in 35 countries and net sales of about 12,000 million Swedish kronor, or about $2 billion U.S. Hexagon says it has set a sales target for the year 2010 at 20,000 MSEK.

Deal Made for Mercury Removal System
by Peter Easton 

One of the largest independent power producers in the United States, Reliant Energy Inc., has signed a contract that will put the Mer-Cure mercury removal system, introduced last year by Alstom, into several power plants in Pennsylvania.

The deal follows the successful launch of Alstom’s Mer-Cure product line in 2007, marking Alstom’s entry into this new market. Mer-Cure delivers reductions in flue gas mercury emissions of up to 90 percent and more, at low sorbent consumption rates, thus trimming operation and maintenance costs, according to Alstom.

The system works by injecting a carbon-based sorbent into the gas duct, where it absorbs the mercury present in the gas. Its patented technology enhances the conditions needed for high mercury removal by making full use of the effective temperature range for oxidation, longer in-duct residence time, and a proprietary sorbent additive that accelerates mercury oxidation. Data from plants using Mer-Cure indicate that this method of sorbent injection drastically reduces the amount of sorbent required, even with mercury removal rates in excess of 90 percent.

The system will be installed at Reliant’s Shawville, Conemaugh, Titus, Portland, and New Castle power stations in Pennsylvania. Delivery is scheduled for early 2009.

Alstom, based in Paris, employs 76,000 people in 70 countries. Houston-based Reliant provides elec-tricity and energy services to approximately 1.8 million customers, primarily in Texas.

Robots Near the Million Mark
by Alan S. Brown 

The world added 118,000 new industrial robots in 2007, boosting the global population of industrial robots close to the 1 million mark, according to the statistical department of the International Federation of Robotics, which represents trade groups from more than 15 countries.

Automakers and their suppliers drove robot sales in the past, but global demand in these sectors was flat in 2007. Instead, growth came from industries producing metals, food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, glass, medical devices, and photovoltaic cells.

One place where automotive companies ordered robots in increasing numbers in 2007 was the United States, where automotive demand for robots jumped 52 percent to 6,200 units as Asian carmakers retooled their American factories even as U.S. auto suppliers reduced capacity and reallocated production. U.S. robot demand also grew in the semiconductor, food and beverage, and pharmaceutical industries.

The Americas added 21,000 industrial robots in 2007, bringing their total robot population to 167,000 units. Demand grew fastest for robots in welding, handling, and clean room applications, but declined for assembly, processing, and dispensing.

Asia remains the largest robot market with 490,000 units, nearly half the world’s total. While the total was up only 3 percent last year, replacement of existing stock boosted regional robot sales to 60,900 new units. Sales of clean room, dispensing, and welding robots rose, while sales of robots for all other applications fell.

Japan accounted for more than 60 percent (38,100 units) of new Asian sales, primarily for industries producing electrical and electronic equipment, metals and machinery, rubber and plastics, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and food and beverages. Korea, Asia’s second largest market, saw robot sales fall 4 percent to 10,300, while China’s sales rose 14 percent to 6,600 units.

Europe set a record with 34,600 new robots, a 10 percent increase, in 2007. This brought the region’s total robot population to 329,600 units, about one-third the world’s total. Germany accounted for more than 40 percent of Europe’s new units as it invested heavily in robots for vehicles, metalworking, glass and ceramics, medical devices, food and beverage, and electrical/electronics industries. Demand in Italy and France, Europe’s second and third largest markets, fell 10 percent, while sales to Central and Eastern Europe rose 56 percent from a small base.

The International Federation of Robotics expects shipments to rise 8 to 12 percent in 2008, led by Europe and Asia. It also expects that lower prices and easier programming will make robots more attractive for small and medium enterprises.

Top Engineers Fret the Details Digitally
by Harry Hutchinson 

According to a survey of more than 600 engineering managers by Boston consulting firm Aberdeen Group, best-in-class engineering teams do a better job of assessing product performance early, tracking details that can cause trouble later, and reusing engineering knowledge than engineers at other companies.

The survey divided engineers into three groups: best-in-class (top 20 percent), average (middle 50 percent), and laggards (bottom 30 percent). Compared with the middle 50 percent, the top engineers said with 33 percent more frequency that they were likely to meet design release targets; 21 percent more of them said they achieve engineering cost targets; 18 percent more siad they meet product cost targets, and 12 percent more said they satisfy customer requirements.

According to Aberdeen, the best engineering teams were more likely than average to use digital tools, including computer-aided testing, to optimize product performance. They also placed simulation tools in the hands of everyday engineers to get early feedback on design and used digital tools to automate assessments of compliance, quality, and cost.

Best-in-class engineers spent a lot of time on two areas that often cause friction late in design. First, they create, track, and manage formal interfaces between subsystems. Second, they map product capabilities down to specific subsystems in order to coordinate outsourced design and platform design studies.

The different between top and bottom-performing organizations were much greater. Best-in-Class companies consistently met their release to manufacturing and engineering development cost targets 88 percent of the time, while laggards struggled to meet targets even 50 percent of the time.

According to Aberdeen, best-in-class performers did a better job of pursuing two sets of strategies. Within their own functional group, they assessed product performance early (71 percent versus 40 percent for laggards), reused engineering knowledge (61 percent vs. 42 percent), designed in a modular fashion (64 percent vs. 45 percent), planned to protect intellectual property (52 percent vs. 27 percent), and used lean principles within their organization (54 percent vs. 30 percent).

They also did a better job of designing products that make life easier for the rest of the company. Compared with laggards, top teams designed for service (71 percent vs. 40 percent), cost or manufacturing (77 percent vs. 55 percent), quality (67 percent vs. 39 percent), and green initiatives (53 percent vs. 36 percent).

The study, The Engineering Executive's Strategic Agenda: Designing for the Enterprise and the Environment, is available free online from www.aberdeen.com through August. The report was sponsored by two engineering software developers, Altair Engineering Inc. and Ansys Inc.

Briefly Noted

Duke Energy of Charlotte, N.C., has expanded its wind operations with the acquisition of Catamount Energy Corp. The price was $240 million plus assumed debt. Catamount Energy, based in Rutland, Vt., was formed in 1992. Since 2001, the company has focused on developing wind projects in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Catamount has approximately 300 megawatts of renewable energy in operation, including its interests in the Sweetwater project in Nolan County, Texas, which is said to be one of the largest wind projects in the world.

DuPont of Wilmington, Del., and SFC Smart Fuel Cell AG announced that the M-25 portable fuel cell, which they jointly developed, has been deployed for its first limited use in the field for the U.S. Army. When worn by soldiers in the field for extended missions, the M-25 is up to 80 percent lighter than conventional power sources, yet is capable of powering a wide range of equipment, according to the Army.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif., a $2.2 million contract for the fabrication and ground test of a solar thermal propulsion rocket engine. This contract extends the current High Delta-V Experiment Program another six months and follows a successful critical design review last March. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is a United Technologies Corp. company.

Ormat Technologies Inc. of Reno, Nev., said that one of its subsidiaries entered into a supply contract for a new geothermal power plant to be built in Turkey. The contract is valued at approximately $16 million and delivery of the equipment is expected to be completed within 16 months from the contract date. The customer, MEGE-Menderes Geothermal Elektrik Uretim, A.S., a private developer and owner of the resource in Turkey, has one operating geothermal power plant that was supplied by Ormat in 2004.

Edmonton, Alberta, plans to use an industrial-scale facility to produce biofuels from municipal solid waste. It has signed a 25-year agreement with GreenField Ethanol, Canada’s largest ethanol producer, and Enerkem, a leading biofuels technology company. The $70 million plant will initially produce 36 million liters of biofuels per year and reduce Alberta’s carbon dioxide footprint by more than six million metric tons over the next 25 years.

MSC.Software of Santa Ana., Calif., which provides Nastran software and services, has acquired the MacNeal Group of Altadena, Calif. The MacNeal Group was founded by Richard MacNeal, an authority on finite element technology. The acquisition helps optimize Nastran technology, according to a statement from MSC.Software.

Adobe Systems Inc. has turned over the Portable Document Format to the International Standards Organization, which will publish specifications for the current version and will develop future versions of the standard, ISO 32000-1.