Appropriate Automation for Flexible Manufacturing

Abstract

Abstract Flexible manufacturing systems(FMS) have met with great interest in research and practice in recent years. It is symptomatic of the present way of thinking of manufacturing planners that the term FMS already implies fully automated manufacturing while, in actual practice in most cases, a less highly automated, but highly flexible, type of manufacturing is much more reasonable economically as is discussed in this paper. First, the striking alterations in manufacturing technology in a changing world are described. Next, alternative development approaches on the basis of a number of case studies, also in various countries, are reported. Finally, an attempt is made to indicate the methodology to be employed in order to arrive at a manufacturing process (more or less automated) optimally matched to a specific manufacturing task. In view of the increasing use of computers in manufacturing, as characterized by the almost popular term of CLM (computer integrated manufacturing), automation first and foremost should be considered a multiple-choice, interdisciplinary design job. If this need for design were overlooked, CIM might well help to perpetuate anachronistic factory structures. Regarding automation (and technology in general)not as a constraint, but as a design problem, opens up the chance to see qualified live work and automated work not as irreconcilable contrasts, but as supplementary productive forces. Often this still requires rethinking at management level, where traditional human concepts and outdated structures are preserved, obviously for fear of losing control