5 for Friday: Participate in the Salary & Career Survey; Packing up to Head to Pack Expo; Encore Performances

Sept. 8, 2023

From our annual salary survey to Pack Expo coverage to process improvements with 3D printing, Machine Design takes a look at the past week as well as a look ahead to the issues facing the design and manufacturing sector.

Bob Vavra

1. It’s Your Forum—the 2023 Salary & Career Survey

One of our content goals at Machine Design is to be useful to our audience. I believe one of our most effective initiatives in pursuit of that goal is our annual Salary & Career Survey. The survey helps us because it provides the granular insights from our audience that we need to be even more useful. It helps highlight the topic areas you see are important in your work, and the areas where more information, insight and education you need.

It’s also a benchmark for salaries and other compensation, as well as an annual pulse of the opinions in manufacturing that drive future investments in equipment and personnel. Here's a link to the 2022 survey so you can get an idea of how valuable this data really is. After that, I hope you share your information and insights with us, and with your fellow engineers.

2. Back to Pack

Pack Expo is one of the more important events of my year. This year’s Pack Expo, taking place Sept. 11-13 in Las Vegas, promises to be no different. Pack Expo sits at the intersection of traditional packaging and materials handling equipment; the explosion in robotics to fulfill those process needs; and the adoption of sensors, vision and machine learning to optimize those functions. I’ll be reporting from the show next week, and I’m on the lookout for those companies both large and small looking to solve the problems facing the manufacturing sector.

3. Outside the Box at Pack Expo

Even though it is a trade show at its core, Pack Expo is committed to other aspects of the industry, and to the community. The show opens on the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and to recognize that event and its impact, PMMI will match donations up to $50,000 to the Tunnels to Towers Foundation.

“Over the past 20 years, Tunnel to Towers has delivered more than 1,000 mortgage-free homes to our nation’s heroes and committed over $500 million across all its programs,” PMMI officials said in a press release. Attendees can donate to the organization when they register as well as online.”

4. Two Encore Performances

Two recent items on the Machine Design website are worth a second look: my interview with MxD CEO Berardino Baratta to discuss such areas as cybersecurity and the connected supply chain in manufacturing, and Machine Design’s new e-book, “Design Engineering: Get It Right From The Start,” which looks at how design is also a function of process improvement.

5. Sustainability in 3D Printing

In her discussion with Machine Design Technical Editor Sharon Spielman, Dr. Elissa Ross, chairman and co-founder of Metafold, offered ways 3D printing can better aid in the larger planetary goal of sustainability.

“Where I think additive manufacturing has so much potential in the sustainability space is in these process improvements,” Ross said. “It’s in creating those better heat exchangers. Another amazing example is in carbon capture devices…the more surface you put in contact with air, the more carbon you can pull from the air. So, 3D printing and its ability to produce these high-surface area highly optimized structures…(is) where the key potential for highly sustainable impacts (is) for 3D printing.”