The future of the factory

Abstract

The basic driving force that will determine the future of the factory is likely to be the margin of profitability. In rapidly changing high technology industry the advances in product design will enable them to increase the margin of profitability through increases in the selling price, whereas in more traditional industries it must be obtained by decreasing the total manufacturing cost. Among the most important factors that will affect the manufacturing cost are, in order of importance, information management (which determines the indirect cost), the materials cost, the direct labor cost, and the capital cost. In order to reduce the direct cost, computers will be used extensively to integrate the entire manufacturing system, ranging from design to manufacturing processes to quality control. For computer-integrated manufacturing systems to be effective, more intelligent machines should be developed to minimize the information flow. However, the single most important thing that will always have the most significant effect on margin of profitability, and thus on the factory of the future, will be the ability to make rational decisions during the synthesis of processes and products. The yield of electronic component fabrication processes, the efficiency of mechanical products, the productivity of a factory, and the portability and efficiency of software can be improved when design decisions are evaluated using the synthesis axioms. Therefore, the factory of the future should not only involve computer-integrated manufacturing systems, but also the computers should be provided with intelligence so as to enable them to make correct decisions and aid the decision makers at all levels of industrial hierarchy.