This is the final Twitter Friday post of 2012 — a fact that brought the year flashing before our eyes in a swirl of year-in-review retrospectives and memories of all kinds of breakthroughs in the world of manufacturing, rotary slides and linear guides, engineering and innovation in general. It's been quite the ride, 2012. Here's a look at some of our favorite moments on Twitter this week, as we gear up for the end of days ... er ... I mean the end of December! All kidding aside, chat us up on Twitter at @BWCnews!
1. The Executive Migration — CEOs Pack Up Their Desks via Manufacturing Executive Blog: An increasing number of chief executives are leaving their offices, a recent report found. Most of those departures could be chalked up to resignation, but 21 percent left had retired and about 17 percent stepped down but stayed on with the company as a lesser-ranking executive. If you're a CEO, do you plan to retire this coming year? Have you started to think about training or scouting for a successor? We'd love to hear your input!
2. New Infographics for Engineers on BWC.com: We made several new additions to our growing collection of infographics for engineers! Among them are a chart that debunks five myths about manufacturing and another that explores the much-talked-about manufacturing renaissance. Check it out, print them out and tell us ideas for future topics!
3. World's Longest High-Speed Rail Line Makes Debut via Shanghai Daily: The farthest-reaching high-speed train in the world made its 1,428-mile debut in China recently, according to the Shanghai Daily newspaper. The massive rail line spans half of China and travels at speeds of up to 186 mph. That super-fast addition to China's existing network of nearly 5,800 miles of railroads means the country now has the world's longest wall, the world's longest bridge and the world's lengthiest high speed rail.
4. The Patent Office — An Innovation Killer? via Manufacturing.net: A recent patent lawsuit filed by 3D Systems against Kickstarter and Formlabs contests the startup's right to manufacturing a successfully financed stereolithography 3D printer. "At first glance, this could easily be shrugged off," the article reads. "Really, patent lawsuits happen all the time, and it is rare that they blow up to anything huge for either side, other than some bragging rights and some lawyer's paychecks (see Samsung versus Apple for a counterpoint)." But lawsuits like this could hearken bad news for crowdsourcing platforms like Kickstarter and, in effect, the small businesses and start-ups that use that form of investment to get an idea off the ground. Your thoughts?
5. Bringing Manufacturing Back to America on Times Call: "When we buy American, we build America," this columnist quotes a manufacturing as saying. And that's a good way to frame the issue as manufacturing executives consider how to balance a global market and, conversely, a need to become at least majority sourced USA. Click through to read the rest of the speech.
