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Rarely is falling below expectations a good thing, preferable even, but that is exactly how the 2013 catastrophe season panned out. What could have been a horrific year of natural [...]

Mere moments away from unsealing the highly anticipated list of 2013 inductees to the 'Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame,' James Quiggle, director of communications at the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud [...]

Finally, a new number to bounce around the p&c insurance industry lexicon: $80 billion. Gulp. That's quite a number, isn't it? For years, we have been estimating that insurance fraud [...]

June 1st marks the beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season, but disaster season is well underway, producing storms of terrifying magnitude. The two-mile-wide tornado that tore through Moore outside of [...]

California is the latest state to find itself in the cross hairs of a national debate about hydraulic fracturing, which is commonly referred to as 'fracking.' Viewed by the most [...]

In idealizing democracy, we can imagine it to be infinitely resilient. In times of crisis, we can call on it when necessary. Then great men and women rise to the [...]

There are certain immutable commonalities that unite people the world over. One is our reverence and childlike glee for Olympic hopefuls and superheroes alike--long after the flame has been extinguished [...]

Depending on the catastrophe activity and incidence of vehicular accidents, a large insurer may process an excess of 100,000 total loss auto claims in a given year. This translates to [...]

When a powerful tornado struck Joplin, Ma last year, one responsive and capable group of claims adjusters and remediation professionals helped a local hospital get up and running and tending [...]

The disconnect between underwriting and claims departments is oft lamented. The undercurrent of animosity that exists between the two--which some construe as conflicting fiefdoms; or simply conflicting priorities--is a multi-faceted [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Many Americans cannot seem to shake that queasy feeling when reading headlines proclaiming that the 'Great Recession' of our time wages on. We have all witnessed the rampant [...]

Spring is a time of growth, renewal, and opportunity, and nowhere is that more true for claim professionals than at the Property Loss Research Bureau/Liability Insurance Research Bureau's (PLRB/LIRB) annual [...]

It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child. The same adage is true for cultivating an expert claim workforce. Foremost, adequate training requires management to [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Each election year provides us with a reality check and a reminder that we all have choices and the power to effectuate change. The impending presidential election marks [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Rigid toolholding offers a platform for productivity on this pump manufacturer's mill-turn center. Peering at the shiny NT4250 DCG situated on Mori Seiki distributor J&H Machine Tools, Inc.'s [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When asked to reveal the secret of the company's success, Brad Julius, founder of ZTM Inc., responds that he follows one rule. 'We give our customers what they [...]

Job shops usually aren't associated with lights-out production. Rather than high-mix, low-volume work, it is the opposite type of work--the low-mix, high-volume production of a captive plant--that usually lends itself [...]

Malcolm Schneer has always been 'big' on EDM. Now big EDM, as in a machine capable of handling extremely large workpieces, is playing a major role at his shop, Swiss [...]

Clippard Instrument Laboratory Inc. resembles an intermittent job shop. The high-mix, low-volume nature of its parts production--there are about 5,000 standard parts in its catalog--means that it is difficult for [...]

Manufacturers of intricately machined components face special part cleaning challenges. Burrs, chips and debris in the tiny crevices can compromise cleanliness specs and compound labor expenses. Because robotics are often [...]

Have you ever felt lost trying to choose a greeting card out of the vast selection lining the racks? Consider how many dies it must take to produce all of [...]

It's late Friday night. While other 19-year-olds may be enjoying a movie or perhaps just hanging out with friends, Michael Goetz is programming a job on a mill-turn. The owner [...]

AtAlpha Engineering and Design (AED; Fort Collins, Colorado) a programming bottleneck was an impediment to fulfilling a goal of doubling capacity. That bottleneck involved adapting to engineering changes in a [...]

Producing three models of spray guns with differing machining requirements translated to 2 1/2-day-long setups, not to mention the additional stress of not being able to keep up with production. [...]

Staying abreast of technological advancements in manufacturing is a daunting task. Over the past years while machine tool capacity has become an issue, management's first response has likely been to [...]

Small, remote shops are sometimes thought of as being set in their ways, but Deering Machine owner Steve Deering, whose one-man job shop is located in rural Georgia, near the [...]

One of NASCAR's sources of breakthrough components sits on two acres in the middle of a pasture outside Lockwood, Missouri. There's nothing pastoral about Kluhsman Racing Components, Inc. (KRC). Having [...]

Continuing in the Hubble Space Telescope's legacy of discovery, in or around 2013, scientists at NASA plan to launch the technologically advanced James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Named for NASA's [...]

Alexander Graham Bell once said 'when one door closes, another door opens.' However, this is not exactly what a company wants to hear when one of its biggest customers--representing roughly [...]

Some shops may be reluctant to trust an 'invisible' method of securing parts for machining. Magnetic workholding holds the part without any visible clamps. However, this is its advantage. Compared [...]

When John Zezulka at Orthopedic Systems Inc. (OSI) drafted a proposal to convince his senior management to modernize tooling and fixtures, the machine shop supervisor realized that the Union City, [...]

A specialist in investment castings has invested in making those castings more valuable. Hartford, Wisconsin-based Signicast Corporation recently strengthened its capacity to perform machining on castings in-house so customers can [...]

With the economy beginning to head south, many manufacturers were searching for ways to cut costs during the late 1990s. To many, this would seem to be an inopportune time [...]

Jackal Fabrication (Whitehall, Michigan) is accustomed to meeting time schedules, bidding competitively and striving to achieve quality workmanship. Its founder and president, Jack Budde, along with Bryan Hughes, partner and [...]

Magnesium is emerging as 'the new aluminum' because of its light weight. As a result, hot-chamber magnesium die casting is gaining popularity in manufacturing. The process produces magnesium parts with [...]

At 200,000 rpm, even small chips in the oil passages of a turbocharger can hamper diesel engine performance. Engine manufacturers need precision parts cleaning and CNC machining. For suppliers such [...]

Insurers can and must improve their claims-handling and underwriting practices in several key areas. That's the message market conduct regulators are sending to both life and health and property and [...]

In a couple of weeks, the 17th annual ACE America's Claims Event will take Austin, Texas by storm. From June 19-21, 2013, attendees will hear from leading industry experts and [...]

In this business, we are intimately familiar with liars and their fibs and foibles, which are anything but pretty. Presumably registering high on narcissistic personality traits, some of them find [...]

We often stress the importance of 'best practices,' but it is actually best-practice behaviors that drive cultural shift at organizations. It is important to keep in mind that certain core [...]

Hurricane disasters can occur whether the season is active or relatively quiet. It only takes one hurricane (or tropical storm) to cause a disaster and virtually unimaginable destruction. Therefore, it [...]

The sky is falling, or so it would have seemed in 2011, a year marred by record-setting devastation that scarred both the earth and the human spirit. During those tempest-tossed [...]

When a catastrophe occurs, it elevates the need for absolute precision. Insurance companies must exercise oversight when developing precise, comprehensive strategies that will enable them to meet policyholders' needs and [...]

It's 2:45 a.m. and sirens start to blare. A tornado has been spotted in the vicinity--in fact, radar detects one less than 200 miles away. Amid rattling windows, trees bowing [...]

Guy Carpenter's Instrat unit has issued reports about last year's notable global tropical cyclone activity as well as 2008 manmade and technical catastrophes. Appropriately titled '2008 Tropical Cyclone Review,' the [...]

Remote Machining melds two seemingly antithetical concepts--control and freedom--so that shops can do some reconnaissance work or tweak parameters on their own terms. The manufacturer's self-titled, all-hardware interface grants real-time [...]

Could detecting and quantifying the internal flaws of complex parts be as easy as operating a microwave oven? Kevin Legacy, manager of computed tomography (CT) and engineering at Carl Zeiss [...]

Cam-driven, multi-spindle automatic machines are still the epitome of efficient, high-volume production equipment for small precision turned parts. When it comes to spitting out parts in quantities in the thousands [...]

The mere mention of 'scale' is enough to elicit shudders or at least a collective groan among those in the fabricating industry. That's because they must grapple with this pest--the [...]

Now available from Mazak is the Variaxis 730, a five-axis vertical machining center. Like the first Variaxis model introduced in 1999, the new machine incorporates a high-precision table with 150 [...]