The benefits of a college degree are well-documented. Including increases in earning potential, job opportunities as well as self-esteem and networking enrichments, the benefits of degrees are irrefutable. These benefits are even more accessible for Michigan’s essential workers under Governor Whitmer’s “Futures for Frontliners” program to provide free tuition. This week on the blog, Jenny Tatsak, Ph.D., Chair of the Business Communication and Marketing department and Professor of Business Communication at Walsh, shares the ingredients needed for an education experience tailored to students managing multiple competing priorities.

The physical workplace is where connections are made, innovation is fostered and culture is grown. It’s also where employees have access to the people, tools and resources they need to collaborate and innovate most effectively. Megan Robinson of NBS Commercial Interiors joins us on the blog to discuss the changes in workspace design, process and technology that companies should be thinking about to get people back to the workplace safely in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the COVID-19 pandemic altering the public health landscape in profound and possibly lasting ways, business decision makers have been forced to think differently about everything from the design and functionality of their office space, to the procedures, priorities and protocols that will define brick-and-mortar environments in the months and years ahead. Andy Gutman of Farbman Group joins us this week on the blog to discuss what those pandemic-driven changes will look like and preparations you can be doing right now to get ready for whatever tomorrow brings.

Despite entering our vernacular more than a decade ago, “blockchain” is viewed by many as a painfully abstract and mathematically complex concept to grasp. Automation Alley’s Noel Nevshehir joins us on the blog this week to demystify blockchain and explain how supply chain management, manufacturing, health care, finance, the Internet of Things (IoT) and other sectors of the economy are being transformed by this technology.

The cloud is usually the first thing people think about when they hear the term Industry 4.0. However, the cloud is just the tip of the iceberg. The real strength of Industry 4.0 stems from digitization, which begins with connectivity. This week on the blog, SICK shares their five-step process to allow existing machines to become significantly more intelligent with very little effort.

Evolution requires transforming the status quo into different production paradigms. Processes must become increasingly reconfigurable, flexible, and scalable. Digitalization is the fundamental enabler of these new manufacturing paradigms, and real-time communication between operators and the manufacturing system. This week on the blog, Paolo Avagliano from Comau shares how digitalization can help you experience higher productivity, faster time-to-market, lower operating costs and prevent risk of operational delays.

Advance manufacturers around the world build different things with different workflows in different places. Yet there is one thing that remains the same among them all: the drive to create a higher performing product as efficiently as possible. Tim Finerty, Shareholder at Clayton & McKervey, joins us on the blog to talk about taking that big step to intelligent factory automation and the broad range of benefits that brings.

This week on the blog, Noel Nevshehir, Director of International Business Services and Global Strategic Partnerships here at Automation Alley, discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the economy and the opportunities for small-to-midsize companies interested in expanding their markets overseas. The good news: There is a lot of room for them to run.

Americans are reevaluating their education options in light of the disruption COVID-19 is causing. They are looking for education that can provide immediate results. For many American workers that means earning postsecondary credentials. Adrienne Way from Edcor, a national provider of education benefits administration solutions, joins us on the blog to weigh in on the increased value of postsecondary credentials as a response to the coronavirus.

Currently every manufacturer, whether realizing it or not, is in a state of liminal space – a term that suggests where we are right now is between what is no longer (a past way of doing things) and what is not yet (a new way of working that is not yet fully realized). We have a global pandemic to thank for this current state of liminal space, but the reality is that liminal space is never permanent. There are choices to be made regarding the direction you will go next. Twisthink joins us on the blog to help find the cilver linings in this unprecedented disruption.