Author Archives: Nataina Velez-Vargas

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Supporting Manufacturing IT Starts with Understanding Others

A common service we provide is assessing all types of manufacturing systems and recommend ways to improve and better support their operations. Over the past few weeks, I have been part of a team that has been digging into a new manufacturing company to understand their IT workflow process and niche software systems. It’s increasingly interesting to me to learn how different companies delegate tasks and utilize different software to run their manufacturing. Every company organizes their people’s contribution a little differently by choosing specific roles for each employee. But, so much of how a company operates their manufacturing systems is dependent on their size, maturity and what technologies and software they use. To the manufacturing novice, you could expect many companies to have an efficient and easy process to perform every operation and solve every problem, but in reality, that is not the case. Every manufacturer is a snowflake in some respect. By assessing a manufacturer’s systems, we take the time to dig in, learn, understand and put ourselves in a position to help them troubleshoot and improve their processes and in some cases their people’s actions.
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How to Develop the Next Generation of Engineers

Children are natural engineers. They love building and taking things apart. Their innate curiosity about the world around them creates the perfect opportunity to introduce and explore what it is that engineers do.
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WFH: Certain to be the most popular acronym of 2020

For many people, the COVID-19 Pandemic is the first time they find themselves working from home for an extended period (or maybe ever!).
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Engineering Through COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every profession in some way. Engineers are lucky; most can avoid exposure while on the job and many were well-suited to work from home. But every type of engineer, from controls and process engineers, to software professionals, and even engineering students from universities across the country, have found the need to adapt and rise to the challenge of our current situation.
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Women in Engineering

Women have always been a part of engineering.  Take Edith Clarke, the first woman to earn an electrical engineering degree in 1918, overcoming both a learning disability and becoming an orphan at age 12.  In 1921, she received her first patent for the Clarke Calculator; she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for this advancement in 2015.   When Edith was hired by GE in 1923, she became the first—the only—woman professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the country.
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