The current global economic forces coupled with the increasing prices for raw materials and employee benefits make it difficult to differentiate one's company from the competition without a certain level of technological sophistication and prowess. By keeping the development of automated systems inhouse, a company protects its inventions from being propagated throughout its competitive base. The less a company needs to go outside for its automation creative juices, the less the chance that its intellectual properties will be disseminated to its competitors. Certainly some automated-systems construction can be safely farmed out, but not the core competencies of sensor implementation and software development for sophisticated monitoring of part-quality and part-sorting functions. Once die protection, basic part-quality monitoring with electronic sensors and off-the-shelf monitors have been fully implemented throughout a metalforming operation, the next step is the appointment of a full-time controls expert to work side-by-side with the sensor applications specialist. The controls expert is responsible for the development of the sophisticated software with which the next phase of the sensor applications specialist can begin. This includes in-die part-quality measurements with 100-percent data logging and data distribution through the company's intranet, automatic good/bad part sorting, self-adjusting dies and in-die resistance welding of hardware to the stamped part.
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