Manufacturing News of Note

Methods Machine Tools, Inc.. (Sudbury, Massachusetts) has appointed Jerry Rex Chief Operating Officer of all Methods operations. Spanning 40 years, Mr. Rex’s manufacturing career began with a machinist position at GE Locomotive. He steadily rose from roles in engineering and applications to production, sales management and executive positions at manufacturers and machine tool organizations. Most recently he served as executive vice president of Concept Machine Tools (Minneapolis, Minnesota). Prior to Concept Machine Tools, Mr. Rex was President of Hegman Machinery LLC, a Morris Group Company from 2013 to 2015. For the 20 years prior, his roles included President of Morris South (Charlotte, North Carolina), Vice President of Gosiger Inc. (Dayton, Ohio) and Regional Manager of J&H Machine Tools (Richmond, Virginia).  Mr. Rex also served as chairman of AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology, where he continues to serve on the board of directors. 

Here is more news to note:

• MakeTime Receives $8 Million in Funding – The funding is led by Colorado-based Foundry Group along with the company’s initial investors.
• North American Robotics Market Grows in beginning of 2016 – Interestingly, while still the largest industry using robotics, automotive was outpaced in terms of robot growth by others.
• Hyundai Wia Appoints North America VP – Steve Pegram will be vice president over the United States, Canada and Mexico.
• Absolute Machine Tools Acquires Longtime Distributor – Machine Tool Technology-21 Inc. adds several machine tool sales and application specialists to Absolute’s Elgin, Illinois, Technical Center.
• Siemens, Local Motors Partner for Development of Large-Scale Additive Manufacturing of Cars – The partnership will expand Local Motors’ use of Siemens CAD/CAM software and will include sponsorship of three new technology labs.