With the blockchain, Wal-Mart will be able to obtain crucial data from a single receipt, including suppliers, details on how and where food was grown and who inspected it. The database extends information from the pallet to the individual package.
“It gives them an ability to have an accounting from origin to completion,” said Marshal Cohen, an analyst at researcher NPD Group Inc. “If there’s an issue with an outbreak of E. coli, this gives them an ability to immediately find where it came from. That’s the difference between days and minutes.”
Work to be doneIn the early days of e-commerce, retailers would carry inventory for each product listed on their website. However, in today's model many retailers never physically touch the products they sell online. Instead, online orders for these products are routed to a third party for fulfilment. Both third-party logistics providers and niche e-commerce fulfilment houses offer services in which they will pack and ship items on behalf of retailers.
The world of 3D printing has officially booked a new high fashion runway show, now that luxury fashion house Alexander McQueen has developed an edgy, one-of-a-kind 3D printed umbrella as part of its autumn/winter 2016-17 collection. I am not ashamed to admit that I used to watch a lot of “America’s Next Top Model” and “Project Runway,” and so I was especially excited to write this story…those qualify as high fashion, right?
The limited edition piece is patterned in a black skull motif – too bad it wasn’t out in time for Halloween! It features an ergonomic, 3D printed handle, which perfectly fits the grasp of an actual human fist. Spooky…
But something interesting, and a little unexpected, is happening. FFF machines print using reels of plastic filament (usually PLA or ABS). The choice of materials has been limited because the filaments are typically produced by small-scale companies, serving a low-end market. But we’re now seeing large materials firms entering the filament market, and this can’t be explained by a sudden, unexpected growth in the number of people who want to print novelty plastic Eiffel Tower models at home.
One of the stars of the show of K 2013 was Arburg’s Freeformer. The Germany-based injection moulding machine maker surprised many with a machine that made rapid prototypes using fused droplets of extruded polymer to build up a 3D shape, in a process akin to FFF but without the need for filament.
A selling point of the Freeformer was the freedom to use materials that weren’t available in filament form because it created a melt stream from ordinary granules.
Material choice has limited FFF in the past. According to Covestro, one of the large material firms which entered the 3D printing filament market, whilst ‘‘over 3,000 materials are available for conventional component manufacturing, only about 30 are available for 3D printing’’.
And the process has suffered by association with the ‘homebrew’ hobbyists. Proper, professional, 3D printers used proper, professional 3D printing processes such as stereolithography (SLA) and selective laser sintering (SLS), with high resolution results. FFF has a tendency to create visible stripes, indicating the individual layers of print that have built up on top of one another, leading to a perception of it being a lower-quality technique.
Three years on, FFF is now being treated as a proper, professional process by proper, professional companies and the problem of limited material choice is being blown away. Covestro demonstrated new materials for 3D printing at K 2016. This portfolio of new materials included TPU powders for SLS and liquid PU-based resins for SLA, but also filaments for FFF from flexible TPUs to high strength PC.
Love them or hate them, industrial robots are here to stay. While there are plenty of critics who are against the modern advancement and widespread adoption of robotic technology, these devices can be of great benefit to employees, business owners, and even mainstream consumers. In fact, robotics has already found its way into the day-to-day operations of several different industries.
Here is a look at four of them:
Generally speaking, manufacturing operations provide the perfect environment for the large-scale implementation of robots and automation technology. In fact, the International Federation of Robotics has forecasted the introduction of no less than 1.3 million industrial robots to global manufacturers by 2018. This is in addition to the robotics already in use around the world.
It won’t be long before the cities of the world begin to look very differently than we know them now. 3D printed houses and other buildings have gone from a distant fantasy to a reality seemingly overnight, and 3D printed construction technology is advancing at an almost dizzying pace. New companies – and new technologies – are springing up everywhere, each with the goal of taking 3D printed architecture and construction further than anyone ever has before.
Cazza Construction Technologies may be a young company, but they’re already making significant progress towards an ambitious goal – the construction of 3D printed smart cities across the world. It may sound like a far-fetched goal, but Cazza has the the technology and expertise to back it up. CEO Chris Kelsey is only 19 years old, but has already built and sold a major tech company. He created the app development company Appsitude, which brought in over $10 million in revenue per year, when he was only 17.
Along with co-founder and COO Fernando De Los Rios, a former Ernst & Young employee, Kelsey started Cazza with the goal of making construction faster, more cost-effective, and more environmentally friendly. Over the last two years, he and De Los Rios have been working with more than 50 renowned engineers from across the globe to develop the technology, which is capable of building a 100-square-meter concrete house within 24 hours, or a 1,000-square-foot house within 10 days, using only one machine.
Trump:French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday urged the United States to respect the "irreversible" Paris Agreement on climate change, and said France will lead a dialogue on the topic with President-elect Donald Trump "on behalf of the 100 countries that have ratified" the deal.
Speaking to a U.N. climate conference in Morocco, Hollande praised U.S. President Barack Obama for his role in getting the landmark pact adopted in the French capital last year.
"The United States, the most powerful economy in the world, the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, must respect the commitments that were made," he said. "It's not simply their duty, it's in their interest."
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