Computer aided part manufacturing

Abstract

The decisions made by manufacturing engineers have to be flavoured by the value system of the times. The rapid change in value systems caused by the human/environmental revolution, will bring about the beginning of a new epoch in manufacturing. This will make old ways of doing things obsolete, but also create new possibilities. Therefore, manufacturing industry may change to a new pattern better adapted to the new environments. In order to meet this challenge in the Norweigan society, an industrial concept, a cell concept, has been developed by the Production Engineering Laboratory NTH-SINTEF. Vital parts of the cell concept have been tested in a full scale pilot plant, in which a variety of diesel engine parts are machined. Part programming, machine loading and scheduling in the cell together with the cell control functions, are performed computer aided, using a three level computer hierarchy.