This week's roundup discusses quality, maintenance, environment, health, and safety management, and big data. If you think an article should be included in the weekly roundup, email info@lnsresearch.com.

Big Data Startups Fight Urban Gridlock

The biggest headlines in the transportation technology market today tend to be around "ridesharing" services and the future of self-driving cars, but a number of startup companies are focusing less on the particular vessels, and more on the spaces in between. Miovision Technologies and Urban Engines are leveraging Big Data technology to feed municipalities mountains of traffic data to help fight gridlock.

With technology like driverless cars seeming futuristic only years ago, it’s important to take a step back and reflect on the less mainstream innovations that are driving revolutionary change in manufacturing. For instance, connected devices coupled with stronger, faster analytics are leading a new charge on maintenance, quality, and energy performance. And we’re just at the tip of the iceberg. More in this week’s roundup.

The pursuit of Operational Excellence no doubt takes a good mix of both strategy and execution. This week's roundup hones in on a few key topics to keep in mind as you inspect your approach to continuous operational improvements. As always, if you have any content that you think would be a good fit for LNS Reserch's weekly roundup, please feel free to email it to me here.

From the Superbowl to major winter storms, there are always opportunities to improve the way we operate. Much like the manufacturing envionment, preparedness goes a long way to ensuring things run smoothly, but the tasks of looking to the future and evolving with the world around us are never-ending. This week's roundup inspects these topics and more.

The implications of mobile strategies (or lack thereof) within manufacturing operations continue to grow as potential use cases expand, technology simplifies tasks, and internal IT organizations rethink policies around security, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and others. In this week's roundup, we lay out the most important considerations to expand (or get started) on your mobile strategy. We also discuss other areas of manufacturing technology expansion, such as next-generation enterprise systems. 

It's that time of year again; a time for reflecting on 2014 as it comes to a close and looking forward to 2015. And what's in store for next year? Among other prognostications, our team looks at how the late-summer implementation of new regulations in life sciences is poised to affect the industry and how companies can prepare. Additionally, we look at what we believe will be one of the bigger topics gaining momentum next year--the Internet of Things--and what major developments will be seen in 2015. All this and more in this week's round-up and of course, Happy New Year from LNS!