Archives for "April, 2010"
Sustainability and the supply chain: A lean operations perspective
Arena partner Bill Schneiderman of The Results Group recently wrote an article on sustainability and the supply chain for World Trade magazine. His premise is that environmental sustainability is here to stay and that companies who marry an authentic approach to sustainability with a broader effort to make their operations more lean will achieve benefits [...]
Enter to win the MAKE/MakerBot 3D printer giveaway!
MAKE Magazine and Makerbot are holding a contest for the best design for a 3D-printable object, and the prize is a Deluxe CupCake CNC 3D Printer Kit. From the MAKE magazine blog: 1. Imagine something you’d like to see printed on a MakerBot CupCake CNC! 2. Design your object using any 3D design software you [...]
An Earth Day salute to the Arena customers working on behalf of the environment
At Arena our customers make such a wide range of interesting products that it’s always fun to learn what each new one does. For years we’ve been adding a growing number of customers in the clean technology and clean energy sectors. Developing technologies that range from electric automobiles, wind turbines, energy-efficient LEDs and off-grid lighting [...]
A product designer on “going it alone”
In 2003, Adam Hocherman went big and founded a consumer electronics company called American Innovative. With the help of the U.S. government’s SBA loan program, he began turning his ideas into products that were built in China. Hocherman has written about this in a series of guest articles for CrunchGear. In Part 1 and Part [...]
In an instant, Polaroid film is back: The Impossible Project
Thanks to The Impossible Project, Polaroid film is back, and production of Polaroid cameras is following. In the 1960s, half the homes in America had a Polaroid camera. By the year 2000, 13 million of them had been sold. Then, in 2007, the financially struggling company ceased production of its cameras. The ubiquity of digital [...]
Don’t let a natural disaster spell disaster for your business
As a business headquartered in California, disaster preparedness has been a must since our earliest days in operation. Yesterday’s tragic earthquake in China and the spate of recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Taiwan, Turkey, Indonesia and Mexico—not to mention the blizzards, extreme weather and power outages that affected nearly every part of the U.S. during [...]
Is small the next big thing in manufacturing?
Chris Anderson has written a phenomenal article about the democratization of manufacturing in a recent issue of Wired magazine. I cannot recommend the article enough, if for no other reason than the chance to learn about a lot of cool micro-manufacturing companies, like Jawbone manufacturer (and Arena customer) Aliph and open-source car company Local Motors, [...]
Arena users — get a preview of Spring ’10 today!
Just a quick note to Arena users out there to make sure you know that the Spring ’10 release of Arena is scheduled to go live on April 11. Spring ’10 gives Arena a new look, and Arena users can get a sneak peek today in this short before-and-after video in the Arena Discussion Forums. [...]
Stanford Cool Product Expo – Wednesday, April 7
If you are in the Bay Area this week, stop by the Stanford Cool Product Expo (CPX) on Wednesday, April 7, 2010, from 12–6pm at the Stanford University Arrillaga Alumni Center. The Cool Product Expo is a free event showcasing more than 40 interesting products and projects from start-ups, university research labs, global manufacturers and [...]
The curse of the 5-cent part (or, the importance of proper documentation)
I always feel fortunate when I get the opportunity to visit a customer. Invariably, I leave a little smarter and more enlightened than when I arrived. Sure, every customer has a long list of feature requests, but at the end of the day, I’ve learned something about how they work and how they work with our [...]
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