DIGITAL ISSUES • DESIGN WORLD

Looking at the state of geopolitics in 2025 At the recent National Fluid Power Association’s Annual Conference in Tucson, brothers Alex and Eugene Chausovsky of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy spoke about geopolitical disruption and what it can mean for manufacturers. They highlighted how today we have a multipolarity in the world,…

Remember what Beaulieu said about tariffs. In late January of this year, I was fortunate enough to see our industry’s beloved economist Alan Beaulieu present at the A3 Business Forum in Orlando. As he’s announced his retirement, that keynote was likely the last time folks in our industry will get hear him speak. Beaulieu will…

Is your company a top workplace for engineers? What makes a company a great place to work? Is it the flexible hours or lunchroom ping pong tournaments? Is it the paid time off or tuition reimbursement? Or maybe the medical benefits and retirement matching? Everyone has different values and priorities when it comes to employment…

Trends include the practical and exotic This year Design World is taking a different tack for its coverage of Trends. We begin the year covering a representative collection of stories (as found in this issue) that typify larger shifts we’re seeing in the industry. We’ll follow with in-depth pieces in coming months highlighting the input…

Blending custom built with assembly line One of the more interesting site visits I’ve been on was a recent tour of Celebrity Cruises’ forthcoming ship, the Celebrity Xcel, at shipbuilder Chantiers de l’Atlantique’s drydock in Saint-Nazaire, France. The facility is the largest assembly dock in Europe, with 3,800 employees and another 6,200 contractors on site.…

27,300 engineers are missing from the future The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) predicts that 114,800 new jobs will be created in the U.S. semiconductor industry by 2030. However, it expects more than half of those jobs to go unfilled. Of the 67,000 vacancies, nearly 27,300 are pegged for engineers at the bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D.…

What will manufacturing look like this year? Although it may seem to some that manufacturing rarely changes these days, being a relatively mature fixture of American life, there are definite fits and starts. Over the past few decades, we’ve seen globalization, trade deals like NAFTA, offshoring, reshoring, supply chain crunches, local-for-local manufacturing, and other political…

What are the top workplaces for engineers? We’re going to find out! Over the past year, we’ve been busy working with our new sister publication Engineering.com, striving to create more meaningful content to help you in your engineering career. We’ve always brought you exceptional technical engineering content and pertinent industry news, but we’ve had feedback…

The devil is in the details Design World’s annual Casebook is one of our favorites. After all, there are few things more satisfying than a well-detailed application story about how a certain set of components and systems solved a specific set of requirements. Such case studies are notoriously hard to procure, in large part because…

In this special edition: Kawasaki works with partners on CL Series cobot applications Kawasaki Robotics (USA) Inc. demonstrated the latest additions to its portfolio, including the CL Series collaborative robots, at IMTS. Plus One introduces dual armed InductOne; Pitney Bowes automates parcel induction As they pass through warehouses and other facilities, many items are handled…

Congratulations to this year’s LEAP Award winners It’s that season when we recognize and celebrate engineering innovations through our annual LEAP (Leadership in Engineering Achievement Program) Awards. Each year, we receive a sample of the outstanding contributions engineers make to industries worldwide. Our esteemed judging panel, which includes experts from various fields in academia and…

The importance of the ally When I was young, a certain celebrity was afflicted with a medical condition. After their diagnosis, the celebrity suddenly became an outspoken advocate for pouring money into research to treat that condition. People kept calling this person brave, which struck me as odd and inaccurate. At the time, all of…

Adding to your career knowledge One of the most exciting things we’ve experienced over the past year has been Design World’s steady growth, especially around our acquisition of Engineering.com, with its excellent coverage in areas such as design and design software, 3D printing, simulation, digital transformation, and manufacturing. Our work together with their staff provides…

 Make it easy to do the right thing Startups have it made. With a single match, they can ignite engineers’ creativity and fuel collaboration and quality naturally within their emerging cultures. Light the same match in a long-standing company, and many people flee and protest, clinging to the way things have always been. In…

Past motion marvels can inspire future creations Summer is vacation season, filled with road trips and relaxation, but also a bit of discovery and surprise. On a recent trip, I came across an outdoor historical exhibition at a park in Ashtabula, Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie. The gigantic steel structure (pictured above) was…

Inflation, the economy, China, and Canada One of my favorite speakers at industry conferences is Alan Beaulieu of ITR Outlook; he regularly presents to groups like the National Fluid Power Association and Power Transmission Distributors Association. ITR’s angle is strictly on policy, economics, and demographic trends, not politics. That’s not to say that he doesn’t…

Hog today, hero tomorrow? Before each dinner, I ask my son to consider everything that went into preparing his meal. We start with Mom or Dad cooking, which leads to working hard to provide healthy food, and so we give thanks for everyone and everything that makes working and living well possible. Then we acknowledge…

Expanding our network Last month, we announced that we’re joining forces with some very well-respected engineering publications produced by CFE Media. Our new titles include some you’ve likely heard of: Control Engineering, Plant Engineering, Consulting-Specifying Engineer, and Industrial Cybersecurity Pulse. Produced by an award-winning editorial team, these brands help round out our engineering coverage and…

Power Transmission In A Digital World Each spring, the editors at Design World prepare a special issue devoted to power transmission, which we call our Power Transmission Guide. It covers the basics of power transmission by spotlighting key components such as gears, actuators, motors and other mechanical components. In a world that is growing more…

Growing pains I remember feeling chronic discomfort in my shins as my teenage tibias attempted to get me up to average height. It was a nice try, but five-foot-two was all they could muster. Fortunately, most engineering and writing careers don’t have a minimum height requirement. Today’s fast-paced world pressures us to grow quickly and…

Looking at digital transformation If you follow the publication online, you’ve surely seen some of the insightful stories from our new Executive Editor, Stephanie Neil, who’s a well-known and respected journalist in the world of packaging technology. Her recent article on how packaging machinery incorporates safety in different areas is a necessary read for anyone…

Digital dominates this year’s discussion The response to our 2024 Design World Trends call was the biggest yet. This print issue contains five features summarizing just a small portion of this year’s observations and insights from experts in motion and automation; tune into designworldonline.com/trends over the next two months to read all the Trends features…

When 99% is simply not good enough I’m going to veer off the normal engineering focus of this column for a month to dabble in a scientific field that’s close to my heart: astronomy. We’re a month out from this year’s big heavenly spectacle in the U.S., the total solar eclipse on April 8th. This…

I love learning about engineering colleagues who are innovating in new ways. Take the current issues with renewable energy. While strides have been made in solar and wind, the variability of these technologies often doesn’t match up with when power is most needed. That’s created much research over the years into ways to store power…

Keeping a focus on engineering leadership Within each January issue of the magazine, we focus on the topic of leadership in engineering. And while that’s usually focused on the leadership qualities of manufacturers as well as individual engineers, I’m proud to announce here that our parent company, WTWH Media, continues to take a leadership role…