The Computer and Manufacturing
The computer is bringing manufactuing into the Information Age.This new tool, long a familiar one in business and management operation, is moving into the factory, and its advent is changing manufacturing as certainly as the stean engine changed it more than 200 years ago.
The basic metalworking processes are not likely to change fundamentally, but their organization and contral definitely will.
In one respect , manufacturing could be said to be coming full circle. The first manufacturing was a cottage industry: the designer was also the manufacturer, conceiving and fabricating products one at a time.Eventually,the concept of the interchangeability of parts was developed, producted thousanda at a time.
Today , although the designer and manufacturer may not become one again, the functions are being drawn close in the movement toward an integrated manufacturing system.
It ia perhaps ironic that, at a time when the market demands a hinh degree of product diversification, the manufacturing enteprises have to increase productivity and reduce costs, Customers are demanding hinh quality and diversified products for less money.
The computer is the key to meet these requirements. It is the only tool that can provide the quick reflexes, the flexibility and speed, to meet a diversified market. And it is the only tool that enables the detailed analysis and the accesssibilty of accurate data necessary for the integration of the manufacturing system.
It may well be that, in the future, the computer may be essential to a company’s survival. Many of today’s businesses will fade away tobe replaced by more-productive combinations. Such more-productive combinations are superquality, superproductivity plants. The goal is to design and operate a plant that would produce 100% satisfactory parts with good productivity.
A sophisticated, competitive world is requiring that manufacturing begin to settle for more, to become itself sophisticated. To meet competition, for example, a company will have to meet the somewhat conflicting demands for greater product diversification, hinher quality, improved productivity, and low prices.
The company that seeks to meet these demands will need a sophisticated tool, one