On December 11, 2024, a ribbon cutting ceremony was held at the new Ivy Tech Manufacturing Innovation Training Center at the Emerging Manufacturing Collaboration Center (EMC2) in Indianapolis, Indiana. This cutting-edge advanced manufacturing training center is a collaboration between Ivy Tech Community College, Eli Lilly and Company, and 16 Tech Innovation District. These organizations are
Is a career in manufacturing for you? More and more students are answering that question with a “maybe” or a “yes” than ever before. And why not? Modern manufacturing facilities offer opportunities that didn’t exist just a decade or so ago. In the not-too-distant past, students were often faced with a simple choice: go to
Is it just us? Or did artificial intelligence (AI) just appear overnight out of nowhere? It seems like we should be used to this by now. A new technology appears on the horizon, promising yet another major breakthrough in the future. Then, before you know it, the future is here. This trend likely results from
What kind of dreams did you have when you were young? Did you think about the future and what kinds of things you’d see in your lifetime? Did you envision flying cars and robot butlers? Of course, today’s automobiles are still firmly grounded, although many of them are now electric. We do have wandering robots
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, most people weren’t familiar with the term “supply chain,” and they certainly didn’t understand the impact it has on their daily lives. Throw a worldwide health crisis into the fray, though, and soon everyone understood how critical a resilient supply chain is to ensuring that the products they need are
Whether it’s a new car or the latest smartphone, there’s nothing worse than saving up your hard-earned money for a major purchase, only to experience problems from the get-go. Sure, manufacturing defects happen from time to time for a variety of reasons, but quality problems can greatly affect any brand’s reputation if they become too
Nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century, it’s no longer breaking news that advanced smart automation technologies continue to revolutionize industrial facilities across the country and around the world. When people think about these technologies, they often envision an army of robots lining an automated production line. While robots and other automated
How do you effectively prepare high school students for the manufacturing jobs of today and tomorrow? If you’re Chardon High School career and technical education (CTE) instructors Tracey Britt and Kim Butala, you partner with Amatrol and Buckeye Educational Systems to create what Taneisha Cordell from ABC News 5 Cleveland calls “a technology playground.” According
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, employers in every sector experienced a phenomenon that manufacturers had been dealing with for many years: a shortage of skilled workers. Most people vividly remember “CLOSED” signs adorning windows due to staffing shortages. While we’re a ways past the pandemic now, many businesses continue to experience skilled labor
FAIRVIEW, TN – He took the job in 2003 as a business education teacher. But Kevin Sizemore didn’t know he’d build a mechatronics program that offers students an associate’s degree along with their high school diploma. Sizemore, the mechatronics instructor at Fairview High School in Fairview, TN, said his goal as an instructor is to
Today’s career and technical education (CTE) instructors face a variety of challenges. For many new CTE instructors, it’s a matter of establishing a program and getting it off the ground. However, it can be just as difficult to revive and improve an established program that’s underperforming. That’s the situation Dean Lepkowski found when he took
There’s more than corn in Iowa. Baseball fans who cherish the 1989 classic Field of Dreams will remember a baseball diamond forged out of a corn field outside Dyersville, Iowa, that brought the ghosts of former baseball greats out to play ball. Today, just down the road from Dyersville, you’ll find an institution that
