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Engineering, particularly engineering project management, is all about understanding and addressing the constraints that control the critical pathways to project success.

Time, cost, technology, labor, capital availability and of course opportunity cost are always factors, but today there’s another: sustainability. That word means many things to many people, but from a project management standpoint, sustainability can be thought of a little like Russian dolls.

Designing a steel mill for example to minimize CO₂ output may be the design goal of a project, but there is also the environmental impact of the construction of the mill to consider, and environmental impact of the design and development activities that precede construction.

Clear definitions of the desired sustainability outcomes, timelines to achieve them, and a well-defined pathway to that success, are all essential, and this puts a premium on designers, managers and the tools they use to minimize project risk.  

Panelists:

David Symons, Future Ready Leader, WSP
Anthony Kane, President & CEO of the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI)
Dr. Rodrigo Fernandes, Director of Sustainability, Bentley Systems

Moderator:

Jim Anderton, Multimedia Content Director, engineering.com

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Learn more about how to reduce carbon and enhance sustainability with Bentley System’s Carbon Analysis.

The post Managing and designing for success with sustainability appeared first on Engineering.com.

This episode of Designing the Future is brought to you by New England Wire.

Anyone who works in the electrical and electronics industries understands one fact about moving current through conductors: everything is a resistor, and everything is an inductor. That’s especially true for AC flow, and even more so at high frequencies, were both skin effect and proximity effect must be considered in circuit design. For cables, conductors with multiple strands are the solution to skin effect, but proximity effect requires a balance between conductors that are surrounded by others, and those that operate on the outer surface of the cable.

The answer to that question is Litz wire, a traditional radio frequency solution that goes back to the early days of radio but is more relevant than ever for a host of high-frequency devices. 

Jim Anderton spoke with Joshua Spaulding, Design Engineering Manager with New England Wire Technologies about the challenge of RF cabling, and how Litz wire solves high frequency issues in many devices. 

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Learn more about New England Wire’s 9 types of Litz wire constructions with multiple varieties of insulation to meet agency and specific customer voltage withstand requirements.

The post Litz wire: Solving AC high frequency issues in multiple applications appeared first on Engineering.com.

This episode of Manufacturing the Future is brought to you by the Italian Trade Agency via its Machines Italia project.

We live in an age of robotics, and although humanoid, consumer focused machines are everywhere in popular culture, the real sweet spot for robotic automation is in industrial and commercial applications. European firms are at the cutting edge of this technology, and a particular center of excellence is Italy, where advanced manufacturing robotics has been in daily use for decades.

Like in America, the Italian auto industry were early adopters and Turin-based COMAU has taken this experience and expanded into a wide range of machines and served industries that range from shipbuilding to packaging. Engineering.com’s Jim Anderton spoke about advancement in robotics with Alejandro Alvarez, Business Development Manager, North America for COMAU. 

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Learn more about Italian manufacturing technology by downloading the latest edition of Machines Italia magazine – Volume XVIII from our sister site, Design World.

Bedrock industries like manufacturing, agriculture, and builders are experiencing numerous growing pains as North American end users seek ways to adjust to challenging business environments and the rapid progression of paradigm-shifting technologies like automation. Navigating these treacherous waters remains a challenge for North American end users, with common problems like operating costs and difficulties incorporating new technology continually bubbling up to the surface.

This issue of Machines Italia spotlights how Italian machine builders are dedicated experts in helping North American end users find workable and efficient solutions to ongoing industry challenges.

And, visit Machines Italia to learn more about Italy’s various manufacturing sectors and how North American buyers can work with Italian industrial solution providers.

The post Advanced robotics, the Italian way  appeared first on Engineering.com.

The march of automation and manufacturing has always been associated with the fear of job loss. The rapid advancement of industrial robotics in the last 20 years has created a cottage industry of speculation over the economic and societal shift caused by a reduced need for workers on the assembly line. US manufacturing workers live in a high wage nation, and are especially vulnerable…do they fear the rise of the machines?

The Pittsburgh Robotics Network has just released the results of a new national survey that examines US worker attitudes toward our AI-driven automation revolution, and Executive Director of the organization Jennifer Apicella, joins engineering.com’s Jim Anderton to talk about the apparent mismatch between worker perception and reality. 

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The post US Workers Ponder the Threat of Robotics appeared first on Engineering.com.

The Trump Administration’s tariff regime has sent shockwaves around the manufacturing world, and has made ”re-shoring” the new word in American manufacturing. Machinery, however, is a global commodity, and some of the highest technology machinery is from European and Asian sources that previously enjoyed an open trading relationship with the US.

Dr. Carlo Angelo Bocci is the Italian Trade Agency Trade Commissioner based in Miami and is the Trade Commissioner for Canada. He met with engineering.com’s Jim Anderton at the Canadian Manufacturing Technology Show in Toronto. Dr. Bocci is a trade veteran with experience in Asia, the Americas and Europe, and he discussed the outlook for the Italian machine industry, and that of European machine builders in general. 

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The post Italian machine tech and why it endures in uncertain times appeared first on Engineering.com.

Self-driving cars, drones, humanoid robots. They are all over the news and popular culture today and are technologies that need a critical capability: navigation. It’s been true for thousands of years, and for most of human history, dead reckoning was a rare skill, and a black art. “Shooting” stars with the sextant is still an option for sport sailors, but today, repeatability and accuracy have never been more important.

It’s been a story of rapid technological development for the last 75 years, from the gyro compass, accelerometer driven inertial navigation systems, to stellar tracking, and terrain following. GPS is of course the lowest cost method in widespread use today, but even its significant capability isn’t enough for many of today’s demanding applications.

Advanced Navigation Senior Application Engineer Matthew Suntup describes the challenges and capabilities of this critical technology in conversation with engineering.com’s Jim Anderton.

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The post Robots, drones, AGVs: it’s all about navigation  appeared first on Engineering.com.

Drones are everywhere today, from suburban backyards to battlefields. In between these extremes is a huge market for useful pilotless aircraft for remote inspection, payload delivery and remote sensing. SwissDrones is one of a new breed of small aerospace companies that use advanced design and development tools to deliver complex projects quickly and cost effectively.

Their medium payload drone helicopter has multiple commercial applications, and Pol-Victor Gisquet, Team Leader, Mechanical Systems Integration with SwissDrones, discussed the technology in conversation with Jim Anderton at AU 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee.  

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The post Drone helicopters with multiple applications appeared first on Engineering.com.

Manufacturing engineers call it the “death zone”. Some call it the “scaling conundrum”. Once a design is finalized, and a prototype made, it’s frequently expensive and difficult to create the pilot runs and small volume production that’s essential to test market and validate a new product. It’s far too expensive to tool up for mass production of a part or device based on only a single prototype, but how can an innovator bridge that gap?

At AU 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee,  Autodesk Fusion Community Manager Jonathan Odom demonstrated a short run manufacturing platform that allows innovators to program and control multiple production technologies, from multi-axis machine tools to 3D printers, and significantly, to share designs with contract manufacturers that offer both manufacturing capacity and useful design expertise of their own.  Is this the universal tool for making anything and everything? Odom explains all to Jim Anderton. 

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The post One tool, to make everything? appeared first on Engineering.com.

COVID 19 generated an unprecedented demand for remote work and created a demand for mass collaboration tools that let designers work as unified teams, without a physical presence. For many tasks, it’s relatively simple, but in the architecture, engineering and construction space, substantially different systems, designs and skills must be sequenced correctly to deliver a project on time and on budget.  Effective project management of an already difficult task, along with simultaneous mass collaboration, is highly challenging. 

Autodesk Workshop XR Senior Director and General Manager Nicolas Fonta talks to Jim Anderton about how the power of artificial intelligence allows widely dispersed engineering and design teams to work cohesively to deliver projects on time and on budget. 

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The post AI powered mass collaboration for engineering appeared first on Engineering.com.

Building engineering is a unique form of craft and science, blending multiple materials, processes and design methodologies. Cabling a modern structure means coping with power and signal conductors which must be routed efficiently through complex structures, a 3D puzzle which challenges even the most experienced engineers.

Toronto-based Augmenta is an AI powered generates optimized layouts without tedious and time-consuming at the design level. Augment co-founder Aaron Szymanski discusses this design first with Jim Anderton.

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The post An AI first: building electrical layout appeared first on Engineering.com.