Top Five Twitter Posts: Flight of the Manufacturing CEOs, Infographics and the Innovation Killer

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.

BWC Celebrates 62 Years in Manufacturing

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Sixty-two years ago today, Bishop-Wisecarver Corporation was born. It came from a partnership between toolmaker/engineer/inventor Bud Wisecarver and bread tray salesman Ray Bishop. How did they meet?

Well ... Bud had put himself out of a job by improving efficiency at a Bay Area blinds and drapery manufacturer. He spent three years modernizing operations at Levelor, which doubled productivity, increased the linear footage produced and got the plant running 24 hours a day with the same number of workers who previously ran it for six. Bud did such a good job that he wasn't needed there anymore. So he began manufacturing screw machine parts through his first company, W.R. Wisecarver and Company.

Credit: @bishopwisecarver // Instagram

Bud's screw parts manufacturing reeled in a new client: Ray Bishop. Ray asked for help making a screw that would better secure bread trays during transport. Bud's invented solution was a locking bar later marketed "for the American trucker," to quote the fliers, as the Saf-T-Sta cargo holder, which you can see in a vintage ad to the right along with one for another truck accessory called the Thrif-T-Lok load bar. On a roll, Bud invented more delivery truck accessories for Ray, including a specialized bread tray known as the Flo-Carri.

The two worked on obtaining a patent for Saf-T-Sta, which they received in 1962. Five years later, Ray and Bud merged companies, naming the new one what it's called today: Bishop-Wisecarver Corporation.

ENGINEERING THE FUTURE Over the next several decades, Bud continued creating novel solutions to engineering challenges, eventually creating our signature DualVee® Motion Technology and a long list of product lines based off that double-row angular contact bearing design. Bud still works at the facility, even into his 80s now, except he's decided to take Fridays off. Like he always says, "If you do what you love then you'll never work a day in your life."

Today, as we celebrate 62 years in manufacturing, we look ahead as much as we acknowledge the work we've already done in building up our California company into a global provider of guided motion technologies. As we make our way into the future as technology continues to increase exponentially, we're always thinking of how to adapt ourselves. We're thinking of how to continue our strong tradition of innovation, invention and out-of-the-box thinking. So with that, let's celebrate this Friday and this birthday with thoughts of future progress ... maybe traditionally you're not supposed to share birthday wishes, but this one's too good to keep to ourselves!

[ Learn all about the history of Bishop-Wisecarver right here ]

Credit: @bishopwisecarver // Instagram

Top Five Twitter Posts: Manufacturing Pianos, Crowdsourced Manufacturing and Managing Info Overload

Friday funday! We're a day out of our first-ever Astra Matchmaker Expo, this one in Seattle, where we networked with a plethora of other woman-owned businesses and supplier diversity scouts from various corporations. It was an interesting, productive day and we can't wait to share more news with you about our membership with Astra and its umbrella organization, Women's Business Enterprise Council. While we were busy at the expo, among other things, we also enjoyed a busy week on Twitter, where we learned more about recent changes to the U.S. manufacturing workforce, the way pianos are made and how one government agency is asking the public for ideas about how to better design military technologies. Here's a sample of what we found interesting. Follow us on our way to next week's "Top Five" post at @BWCnews!

1. How Steinway Makes Pianos by Hand on CNN Money: The manufacturing workers at Steinway have 150 years of craftsmanship on their shoulders — well more than a century of tradition, style and quality

Credit: CNN Money

behind their handiwork. It's a lot of responsibility and a little nostalgic since piano-making is somewhat on the decline as digital keyboards become better in quality and more affordable. Fall in love with pianos all over again by watching this video clip of employees at work inside a piano-making facility. It's hard to imagine pianos will ever go out of style.

2. Women in Manufacturing on CNN Monday: Can you tell we were a little stuck on CNN news this week? Here's another interesting story from the network, this one about the burgeoning female manufacturing workforce. Even though the nation lost 15,000 manufacturing jobs from July to August, per the latest info released last week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of women filling manufacturing and machine shop roles is on the rise as the field becomes more high tech with the simultaneous increase of computer-aided machinery.

3. Making the Information Firehouse Manageable for Data-Driven Decisions on Fast Company: Suffer from "analysis paralysis?" Information overload? This article picks the brain of a data technology expert, Dimitri Maex, who says the best approach is to figure out how to use the data instead of just taking it all in. Interesting insight from someone whose book on the subject recently hit stores across the nation.

Credit: New York Times via G.E. Research

4. Pentagon Pushes Crowdsourced Manufacturing via New York Times: The lead time for a military manufacturing project often runs from a decade to 20 years because of research, funding and the spiderweb of government red tape. But an arm of the Pentagon wants to change that. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency aims to reduce that design-to-production process by up to four years, according to this NYT story. How? By rewarding students at various universities a prize for their efforts in helping aid military research. Interesting — seems a productive way to speed up public manufacturing, research and technological development.

5. Newb in Space on Engineering.com: In exactly 510 seconds, the fuel runs out and the rocket engines halt. Silence falls. As a newb in outer space, the first thought to enter Richard Garriott's head was, "We aren't very high. Hope we don't fall back to earth." Listen to the rest of the interview in this video clip. Amazing insight from someone new to the extraterrestrial universe.

Meet Eleanor, Our New Marketing Intern!

FRESH FACES This has been a year of fresh new fun for us — newly hired VPs, exciting news announcements and the launch of our first-ever engineering and marketing internship program! Today, we welcomed our new marketing intern, Eleanor Huddart, to the team. She'll stay with us through July, learning the ins and outs of social media and marketing in the industrial B2B space. After taking a quick tour of the Bishop-Wisecarver plant, the machine shop and the rest of our Bay Area headquarters, she sat down to write a little intro for you all. Take a second to leave her a comment — help us welcome her into the new role! Thanks for working with us, Eleanor! It's going to be a great summer!

IN HER OWN WORDS "Hi! My name is Eleanor and today is my first day as a marketing intern at BWC. I have just finished my third year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where I am doing a double major in International Relations and Management. I am really happy to be back in California and under the sun, since it was snowing in Scotland right before I left!

I have taken marketing classes at St. Andrews and I am really looking forward to putting what I have learned in them into practice at an engineering company! I haven’t been exposed to engineering much, so this internship is such a great opportunity for me to not only learn more about engineering, but about marketing the wide range of products that BWC manufactures.

I was just given a tour of the building and it is really impressive! All of the machinery looks really high tech and I am really hopeful that by the end of this internship I will know how all of the machines work and can brag to my friends about how much I know about linear guide systems and engineering in general!"

Top 10 Twitter Posts — Week 10, Our Better-Late-Than-Never Edition

Solar flares, Kony 2012, manufacturing history and all kinds of news flickered across our Twitter feed last week. Here's our takeaway of the more memorable headlines, pictures, videos and thoughts in case you missed out on the conversation. Make sure you're a part of it this coming week! Just follow us at @BWCnews and tweet back!

Credit: NASA

1. A Space Weather App for Your Smart Phone on NASA.gov: When last week's massive solar flares made headlines, it sparked a lot of folks' interest in the weather outside our own atmosphere. Well, NASA blasted out a friendly reminder that you can get all the latest space weather info sent to your iPhone or Android. Neat, isn't it?

2. From College Business Plan to Successful Company on Yahoo News: Sometimes it takes a while to grow up, learn the ways of the world and come into your own as an adult. Or, you can hit the ground running. This story's about a guy who did the latter. This college student won some cash in an entrepreneurship contest and instead of blowing it all, used it to start his own company. Today, the company's super successful. Read the article to find out how it turned out that way.

3. Underwater Robots Create Comprehensive Map of Titanic Wreck on Washington Post: Researchers have put together what the experts call the first-ever exhaustive map of the infamous 1912 Titanic wreck. The underwater robots deployed by this research team took somewhere around 100,000 photos of the shipwreck — incredible!

Credit: Digital Manufacturing Report

4. History-Rich Museum or Self-Marketing Apple Store on the Bishop-Wisecarver Daily: A column in the Washington Post makes the case for American manufacturing by asking that Congress OK funding to create a National Museum of Arts and Industry. Because American ingenuity pre-date "shiny Apple iProducts," the article states.

5. Parrot AR.Drone Joins with Epson Moverio BT-100 on Engadget.com: Some tech prodigy merged some quadricopter with some 3D video game lenses (the Parrot AR.Drone and Epson Moverio, respectively) to create a super cool flying surveillance thingamajig. Neat!

6. How the Kony 2012 Video Went Viral via the New York Times: Regardless of whether you support the controversial nonprofit that put this video out, it's interesting to see it go viral in all of 24 hours. The NYT devoted an article in today's issue on the 30-minute documentary's viral popularity asking how exactly it achieved that. Interesting study in social media, if anything.

Credit: Business Insider

7. Top 10 Manufactured Products in the U.S. Export Industry via Business Insider: Any guess on what the nation's top exports are in its $2 trillion export industry? Well, to name a few: Electrical equipment, fabricated metal and machinery. Click through to see the other seven.

8. Check Us Out in Design World via TwitPic: Don't hate us for the blatant self-promotion, but seriously check out our glossy ad on page 55 of Design World's February issue. Sleek, isn't it?

9. Believe It — Harvard is Cheaper Than Cal State on InsideBayArea.com: You read that right! Recent fee hikes in California's public college system and private schools' penchant for being more generous with financial aid evens out to schools like Harvard and Stanford actually being more affordable to middle-income families, according to this study. It's pretty shocking when a school system once lauded for being democratic is pricing out most of the population from pursuing a higher education.

10. Starbucks to Launch Single-Serve Coffee Maker on Ad Age: Hey java-nuts, ready for your shot of coffee news? Sounds like the mega-corporate purveyor of fine coffee is ready to roll out a fancy new single-cup coffee maker. Another way to enjoy a shot of your gourmet bitter brew. Cheers to that!

Credit: The Street

Q&A with Vice President of Manufacturing Aldo DeAmicis

Aldo DeAmicis joined Bishop-Wisecarver about a month ago as our Vice President of Manufacturing [ check out his press release ]. Since he's had a little time to settle into his new role, we thought we'd steal a few more minutes of his time for a quick interview.

We wrote about his hire at the end of February, but since then we've learned a lot more about him. Like about how he plays hockey whenever he gets the chance (he was raised in C-eh-N-eh-D-eh, so of course that's his favorite sport). Or how he had to get special written permission to have an arm tattoo to get his job as a U.S. military intelligence officer. Or how he's an ardent scholar of lean manufacturing.

It's definitely exciting to have him on our team, and we will check in with him every so often to pick his brain (we'll share those conversations right here on our blog). Got a question of your own to ask him? Let us know and we'll pass it along. Just email them to jenniferw@bwc.com.

Question: You came from a big corporate background. What led you to join forces with a smaller family-owned manufacturer?
Answer: I felt that I could bring my knowledge of large corporate processes to a smaller company to propel efficiencies at Bishop-Wisecarver. Also, BWC's can-do attitude and dedication to customer service is inspiring.

Question: What have been some of your proudest moments, personal or professional?
Answer: Personally, the proudest moment of my life was becoming a father. Professionally, the day I graduated from Marine Corps boot camp holds a special place in my memory as a significant mental and physical accomplishment.

Question: Why did you pursue manufacturing as a career in the first place?
Answer: I enjoy the creation of tangible products. By working at a company that manufactures something, a piece of your legacy is embedded in that technology.  

Question: How does your military experience affect your leadership style?
Answer:  Being a leader of U.S. Marines has had a profound impact on my leadership style. Often people think that military leadership is purely autocratic; however I learned that a leader that respects input from all levels and leads by example are the most successful leaders.

Question: You’re big on lean manufacturing. Why?
Answer: In today’s competitive global market a company that does not embrace lean will not likely survive. By aggressively using tools that comprise lean manufacturing, Bishop-Wisecarver gains a competitive advantage and adds value to our products by completing production orders on time with minimal waste.

Question: What are a few of your goals for Bishop-Wisecarver during your first year?
Answer: My intent is to not only transform the factory floor to incorporate 21st Century technology and lean manufacturing but also to engage office personnel to go to the place value is added: the production floor. By actively participating in production floor walks or GEMBA walks we involve all employees in lean thinking.

Question: Favorite sport? Which team?
Answer: I like hockey. Growing up in Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada gave me the opportunity to learn the game as a youth and I continue to play in an adult league in San Jose, CA. Since there is no NHL team in my hometown, I have adopted the San Jose Sharks as my home team.

Question: What's your favorite quote?
Answer: Wayne Gretzky said, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” I do not want to imply by liking this quote that I have mad hockey skills like “The Great One." However, to me, the quote transcends the sport and applies to life personally and professionally. By projecting ahead to what might happen keeps you relevant and drives you to position yourself to receive that advantage.

VIDEO SERIES, Life of an Inventor: Bud Wisecarver

Follow the series on our YouTube channel! American Toolmaker Bud Wisecarver, co-founder of Bishop-Wisecarver, is the original inventor of double angular contact bearing technology -- also known as, DualVee Guide Wheels. It all started in Bud's machine shop sixty years ago. We hope you will enjoy Bud's story via Life of an Inventor.

Click the arrows to shuffle through the video clips.