finance-worldwide

By: Victor Holman

Have you ever been involved in a performance initiative where employees asked “why are we doing this?” Or they were apprehensive and resisted with strong push back. Or even worse, they flat out refused to cooperate altogether? To say this is a common occurrence in enterprise performance management would be an understatement. Creating a high performing organization involves numerous requirements, perhaps none more important than gaining employee acceptance.

While most will agree that managing performance is critical to the success of a business, strong resistance is often met when it comes to an initiative which entails scrutinizing the productivity of business units and employees. Often times, in the employees’ eyes, a performance improvement initiative is a negative reflection of their current performance. It may even come across as if their performance is being singled out, or that others are telling them how to do their job. As a result, morale is diminished and the performance initiative is halted before it ever gets off the ground.
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Advances In Technology Improve Rack And Pinion Performance And Positioning

By: Chris Muldowney

When an engineer needs to convert rotary motion to linear motion, or develop axes for machining operations, they often choose ball screw drive mechanisms such as electric lifting actuators and electric ball screw actuators. Coming in third are rack and pinion drives, which have largely been overlooked thanks to their reputation for outdated technology with limited positioning accuracy.

With recent improvements, however, engineers are beginning to reconsider rack and pinion systems, which can be used as electric lifting actuators. The new generation of rack and pinion systems feature advances in grinding mounting surfaces to tight tolerances, wear-resistant surface treatments, individually deburred gear teeth and compact low-mass designs; meaning they can offer high dynamic performance and unlimited travel distance. For precise and long travel, linear-motion applications, engineers may also consider rack and pinion drive packages from a planetary gearheads manufacturer, which can offer increased torque.

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