factory of future

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Factory of the Future

UNIT 13 FACTORY OF THE FUTURE

Structure

13.1 IntroductionObjectives

13.2 Trends in Manufacturing13.3 The Future Automated Factory

13.3.1 The Information System in the Automated Factory13.3.2 Processing and Assembly13.3.3 Material Handling13.3.4 Inspection Systems

13.4 Social Impacts of Automation of Factories13.4.1 Impact on Labour13.4.2 Retraining and Education13.4.3 Social and Economic Forces

13.5 Summary13.6 Key Words13.7 Answers to SAQs

13.1 INTRODUCTION

Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM), automated inspection systems, automated

material handling, automated storage and retrieval systems, CNC machines and tool

handling systems, flexible manufacturing systems, cellular manufacturing system,

Operation aspects of CIM, computer aided process planning, material planning for CIM

system, and control and simulation of CIMall we have discussed in earlier sections.

These topics are directing the technology of manufacturing towards the fully automated

factory of the future. In this unit, we will discuss about the trends in manufacturing, the

future automated factory, and their social impact on society.

Objectives

After studying this unit, you should be able to

understand the trends in manufacturing, explain the future automated factory, and appreciate the social impacts of automation of factors.

13.2 TRENDS IN MANUFACTURING

Certain trends that are occurring in manufacturing are very important for shaping the

factory of the future. These trends come into picture due to the managements desire to

find new ways to increase productivity and from new opportunity afforded by

developing technologies. These trends are explained in the following sub-sections.

Shorter Product Life Cycles

Definitely, one of the trends is the pressure due to competition to develop and

produce new generations of products that are increasingly complex in less time.

Examples of this trend are : automobiles, airplanes, computers, machine tools, and

many other products. This technology rat race results in shorter product lives

not due to the older products wear out but because new offsprings makes previous


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Factory of the Futuredramatically reduced. Instead of keeping several days for supply of parts on the

hand for final assembly, the inventory buffer is reduced to hours.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is a method used by different companies to subcontract the

manufacture of the components of their products to outsides firms. Instead of

producing the components themselves, they find it more convenient and less

expensive to have other produces the components. In most cases, the large firmscontinue to do the final assembly of the product at their own plants where they can

maintain better control over product quality. The advantages of outsourcing

includes reduced labour, elimination of equipment that is poorly utilized,

avoidance of major investments in new manufacturing facilities, reduction in

inventory, and dealing with companies that are expert at certain manufacturing

technologies.

Point-of-Use ManufactureThis approach is closely related to JIT but it is applied inside a company.

Point-of-Use manufacture means that the workstations making the components are

located along the assembly line immediately before the assembly operations they

serve. In this way, the components flow directly into the assembly stations. Thissubstantially reduces the amount of work-in-process and time delay. The risk

suffered by the company is that one of the component production operations will

fail and cause the entire assembly line shut down. To reduce this risk, a small

float of parts is usually maintained between the workstation that makes the parts

and the workstation that assembles them.

Pressure to Reduce InventoriesDuring the late 70s and during much of the 80s, interest rates increased to historic

levels. Companies realized that there was a very high investment cost associated

with keeping inventories. Attempts were made to reduce inventories of all types.

In manufacturing the focus was on reducing work-in-process.SAQ 1

What are the different trends in manufacturing?

13.3 THE FUTURE AUTOAMTED FACTORY

The concept of the automated factory is usually applied in the context of discrete product

manufacturing and in connection with products that are made in medium or small batch

sizes. The factory of the future will have to perform basic manufacturing functions such

as processing, assembly, material handling and storage, inspection, and control.

The objective in the automated factory is to achieve a level of untended integrated

operation similar to that which currently exists in a computer-controlled production plant

which processes chemicals, petroleum, foods, and certain metals. In such a plant, there

exists a relatively small crew of perhaps 5 or 10 persons who observe the production

operations. These people perform maintenance and repair functions on the equipment,programming of the computer systems, monitoring the computer controlled processes,

activities that involve interactions with the outside world, plant security, and general

supervision.


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Control and Simulation

of CIMIn the discrete-product manufacturing industries, complex problems are encountered in

achieving the same level of automation because of the difficulties in processing,

assembling, handling, and inspecting a diverse mix of products. In the multiproduct

situation, the main difficulty in the manufacturing is the huge amount of information that

must be processed for each different product made. Each component in the product has

its unique geometry specification, material definition, and processing route sheet. For the

product itself, there are parts lists, operating specifications, assembly drawings, and soon. Production schedules must be formulated, materials must be ordered, labour and

equipment must be planned, and so it goes. It has been estimated that only about

one-eighth of the people in the factory are directly concerned with processing the

product, while the remaining seven-eighths are handling and processing information. It is

the information system in the future factory that will implement the control function in

manufacturing.

13.3.1 The Information System in the Automated Factory

Certainly, one of the features that will distinguish the future automated factory is the

higher level of the information processing and data base management that will be

required to operate it. At one time it seemed reasonable that all of the data and

information required to operate the plan might be contained in one large central database. However, the sheer size of the database and the changing nature of software

practices over time is likely to make the single data base impractical.

One of the reasons why the factory data base will be so large is that it must be capable of

handling not only alphanumeric data, but must also be able to store, process, and

transmit, and display graphical data. The computer systems must be capable of

supporting engineering design and analysis functions, and the complex and often

time-consuming numeral computations that are associated with that functions, as well as

the traditional data processing applications. This capability to handle geometric data will

provide the opportunity for direct communication of product specifications between the

computer systems of the computer firm and its suppliers.

Information system of the future will probably have the capacity to interpret data in more

than the conventional data processing sense. Instead of merely performing repetitive

calculations on the data, the system will be able to understand the inherent meaning of

the data being manipulated. Large computer systems at the third and fourth levels of the

computer hierarchy will possess attributes of comprehension and intelligence in their

processing of information. They will be able to make decisions and initiate actions in the

company for the timely execution of procedures that must occur during the

manufacturing cycles. In essence, the information system used to support the automated

factory of the future will become a knowledge base management system rather than a

data base management system.

13.3.2 Processing and AssemblyThe processing and assembly functions in manufacturing are the fundamental operations

that transform raw materials and add value to them. Let us consider some of the changes

that are likely to occur in processing and assembly technology.

Machining is likely to remain an important process in manufacturing. Machining

operations of the future will likely be carried out at speeds substantially greater than

today. Increase in speed will substantially improve productivity in machining operations.

Advances in cutting tool materials and machine tool technology will make these

increases possible. The high cutting speeds will generate chips at a high rate, and

beneath-the-floor systems are likely to become prevalent as a means of solving the chip

disposal problem.

In addition to machining, the use of near net shape processes will grow in importance.

Near net shape processes are those which attempt to generate the final shape of the part

in single step or a limited number of steps. Their objectives and advantages include


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Factory of the Futurereduced waste in the form of chips or other scrap material, reduced manufacturing cost

and reduced number of operations required to form the part. Finally, the growth of

microelectronics technology has forced the development of specialized chemical,

optical, and physical processing methods to create large scale integrated (LSI) and very

large scale integrated (VLSI) circuits on miniature silicon chips. These processes include

refined photolithography techniques, chemical etching, diffusion, ion implementation,

and electron beam etching. It is anticipated that some of these processing technologies

will find many industrial applications beyond microelectronics.In the assembly area, some of the biggest productivity improvements are expected to

come from a greater awareness of the impact of product design on assembly

methodology. By designing parts for ease of automatic assembly, the number of

assembly steps and corresponding costs will be reduced. Total product cost can be

minimized by achieving an optimum balance between the component costs and assembly

costs.

13.3.3 Material Handling

The material handling function looms as a significant obstacle that must be overcome if

we are to achieve the future in small- and medium-lot-size manufacturing. Two problem

areas regarding material handling will be :

Flexible routing for different parts, and Mechanical interfacing of material handling and production systems.

The first of these problems involves the capability of the material handling system to

deliver different work parts to different cells in the plant according to the particular

routing of the part. In conceptual model of the automated factory, the various parts and

products will each require its own set of processing operations, and the handling system

must be able to provide these flexible routings. This flexibility will be achieved by using

computer control of the material system. The most flexible of the material handling

systems is an automated guided vehicle system. Because of its flexibility and capability

to be controlled by computer, it is one of the fastest-growing segments of the material

handling industry today.

The second problem area is the difficulty in transferring parts between the material

handling systems, production workcells, and the storage systems in the plant. This

problem is referred as mechanical interface problem. A mechanical interface is required

each time a part is transferred from one type of system in the factory to another. The

transfer must be accomplished within certain locational requirements. The method of

transferring loads between systems in the future automated factory will probably make

use of standard-sized pellets. Different pellets have different fixtures to handle the

diverse mixture of products made in factory.

13.3.4 Inspection Systems

The inspection function is to become more automated in the future as quality continuesto remain a high-priority issue. Current trends in automated inspection suggest that the

future factory will be characterized in the quality control area by following :

Inspection procedures will be integrated into the production process to forma closed loop feedback control system. Processing errors detected in

inspection will be corrected on line so that much closer to 100% good

product can be achieved.

Automated inspection methods will permits the use of 100% inspection ofproduction output rather than the sampling inspection procedures.

Noncontact sensors, such as machine vision and other optical techniques,will come into widespread use in automated inspection.

Computer-controlled inspection technologies that can be adapted to varyingproduct configurations will grow in importance in the future automated

factory.


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of CIMThe future automated factory will be an extension of todays Flexible Manufacturing

Systems (FMS). One might consider the automated factory to be a very large FMS.

However, the problems of operating and controlling the automated manufacturing system

become significantly larger as the production capacity of the system increases. There are

practical limits that must be imposed on the size of the factory.

The focused factory is one that concentrates its efforts on a limited, concise,

manageable set of products, technologies, volumes, and markets. The future automatedfactory is likely to be a focused factory, limited its activities to certain families of

products which can be produced using a limited set of processing technologies.

In effect, the focused factory uses a modified version of the principle of standardization.

There are opportunities for standardization even in the production of small to medium lot

sizes of diverse products. These opportunities include :

Design Standards : CAD/CAM system tends to promote standardization bybuilding it into the design software.

Raw Materials : Products can be selected so that the variety of rawmaterials is limited to a confined set.

Tooling : Many plants tend to allow the variety of tooling to grow out ofhand. It should be possible to limit the numbers of different types of tooling

and other supplies that are used.

Processes and Methods : The variety of manufacturing processes andmethods included in shop practice is limited to a manageable set.

SAQ 2

(a) Describe the role of information system in automated factory.

(b) What are different opportunities for standarisation of factories?

13.4 SOCIAL IMPACT OF AUTOMATION OF FACTORIES

There will be a social consequence of the future automated factory, with its reduced

number of employees and no direct labour participation in the production processes. The

obvious impact is on the unskilled workers who will not be needed to run the production

machines and perform the manual labour tasks. But other types of work will also be

affected.

It will not happen that all companies in all industries suddenly switch to the automated

factory overnight. The building and learning process will take time, with some industries

embracing the new CIM and automation technologies more slowly than others. The

automated factory will be introduced gradually, and effects on the workforce will be

evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Nevertheless, the effect will be noticed.

13.4.1 Impact on Labour

The future automated factory means substitution of machines for human workers. The

implementations for employment in factory operations are clear. As automation is

implemented, there will be a shift from direct labour jobs to indirect jobs. Direct labour

factory work tends to be well defined, manual, and repetitive. Due to these feature, the

skill level required to perform it is generally low. Indirect labour work in factories is


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Factory of the Futuresometimes manual but not as well defined and not so repetitive. Many of the job

classification for indirect labour require skill and training.

As a consequence of the shift from direct to indirect labour in future factories, the rank

of labour unions are likely to be adversely affected unless the unions can recruit in

employment areas where they have traditionally not been successful. Highly skilled

professional and semiprofessional workers have tended to be more confident about their

employment security, and have associated more with management and professional

staffs. Prospects for membership growth in these employment areas pose a difficultchallenge for the unions.

It is not possible that all workers who currently qualify for direct labour positions in

todays conventional factories will qualify for indirect labour positions in the future

automated factory. This will happen because of the difference in skill requirements.

Direct labour jobs in production will be displaced. Some of the unskilled workers can be

retained, but many will not be employable. For the worker who is affected, and for

society, there is no denying that job displacement is a negative aspects of automation.

However, if companies do not automate their factories of the future, there is likely to be

no future for these companies. The negative impact on employment in this case would be

far worse.

13.4.2 Retraining and Education

As we move towards a more technological society, the importance of technical education

seems clear. There are two aspects to the educational solution. The first deals with the

education of the young people still in school today. It is important that our society trains

young people in sufficient numbers to design, build, and operate the future automated

factory and to deal with the other technologies that will be so important to our

economics process and well-being.

The second aspect of the educational solution involves the retraining of the workers that

are displaced by new technologies. But some difficulty will arise with regard to

retraining. First who will pay the money for retraining because technical training is

costly? Another difficult issue involves the obligations of the worker after the retraining.If the company provides the retraining, and increase the skill and education level of the

worker, is the worker obligated to remain with the same employer or move to another

geographical area to seek employment? The worker may feel that the organization

sponsoring the retraining course should also provide employment in the same

geographical location.

Finally, a significant question in the education and retraining issue is: where does society

get the trained and modern laboratory equipment to accomplish the retraining? Many of

the new technologies in which training is required are still emerging, and the teachers

who have been exposed to and educated in these fields are not available. How does

society retrain the teachers who are presently in the fading technical fields so that they in

turn can retrain the workers to be productive in the emerging technical fields?

13.4.3 Social and Economic Forces

The trend toward the future automated factory seems unavoidable in modern

industrialized societies. There are several social and economic factors, which promote

the development of such a factory. These include :

Necessity to increase machine utilization The economic necessity to increase productivity The high cost of in-process inventory The need to reduce the wastes The desire to reduce manufacturing lead times to respond more quickly to

customers demands

The need to use raw materials and energy as efficiently as possible


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of CIM Worker safety The trends in the labour force to seek the employment in service sector and

not in manufacturing.

These factors constituted the deriving force behind the development of automated

assembly machines, transfer lines, NC, and other automated production systems of today

are also the force for further advances, culminating in the computer-automated factory ofthe future.

SAQ 3

(a) What will be the impact of future automated factory on labour?(b) What are the different social and economic factors which promotes the

development of automated factory?

13.6 SUMMARY

The introduction of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) will become a matter of

survival for many industrial concerns in the coming years. Information technology will

increasingly be recognized as a factor of production, not only influencing organizational

structure, but also becoming a significant competitive factor. Factory of the future will

have to perform the same basic manufacturing functions. Global competition and rapidly

customer requirements are forcing major changes in the production styles and

configuration of manufacturing enterprise. Traditional centralized manufacturing

systems are not able to meet these requirements. In recent years, the internet has become

the worldwide information platform for the sharing of information and data. Information

processing is an important challenge in an internet-based manufacturing environment,

and must facilitate distribution, heterogeneity, autonomy and cooperation.

13.7 KEY WORDS

JIT : It is a means of reducing inventory of raw

materials and purchased parts.

CAD : Computer Aided Design is basically a design

activity that involves the effective use of computerto create, modify and document the engineering

data. CAD uses computer based interactive

graphics system for design purposes.

Outsourcing : It is a method used by different companies to

subcontract the manufacture of the components of

their products to outside firm.

Processing and Assembly : The processing and assembly functions in

manufacturing are the fundamental operations that

transform raw materials and add value to them.

CAM : Effective use of computer technology in planning,manufacturing and management is termed as

CAM. It is the application of computer in various

activities of manufacturing.


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Factory of the FutureCIM : Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is an

application of computers in the field of sales,

design, manufacturing and business of the

company. CIM is used for integration of various

manufacturing activities in a factory.


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of CIM FURTHER READING

Bouchor T. O., Computer Automation in Manufacturing, Chapman and Hall.

Groover, M. P. (2001),Automation, Production Systems, and Computer-Integrated

Manufacturing, 2nd Ed, Pearson Education: Singapore.

Shankar, R. (2004),Industrial Engineering and Management, Galgotia Publications,

New Delhi.

Carrie, A. (1998), Simulation of Manufacturing Systems,John Wiley.

Law, A. M. and Kelton, W. D. (1982), Simulation Modelling and Analysis,

McGraw-Hill.


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Factory of the Future

CONTROL AND SIMULATION OF CIM

This block, comprising three units, deals with the Simulation Modeling in CIM, use of

communication and control techniques and finally concludes with brief discussion on

Factory of the Future.

Unit 11 deals with concepts of simulation modeling. Simulation is a widely used

quantitative procedure in which a process is described by a model of reality and then aseries of organised experiments are conducted to predict the behaviour of the model over

a period of time. It also describes the simulation languages used for design of simulation

model. Finally, some simulation case studies have been discussed.

Unit 12 discusses about the network architecture, LAN standards, tools for object

identification like sensors, barcodes, transponders, and vision systems etc., control of

communication system and manufacturing data base management system in CIM is also

briefly discussed.

In Unit 13, we will discuss about the trends in manufacturing the future automated

factory and social impact on society. The use of information system in an automated

factory and various inspection systems have been discussed in this unit.

factory of future

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