The Impact of Computers on Manufacturing

1. Introduction

At the end of the 18th century, inventions such as Kay's Flying Shuttle, Hargreaves' Spinning Jenny and the power provided by Watt's Steam Engine changed the way that goods were produced. This period, now known as the Industrial Revolution, saw the start of the factory system and gave birth to mechanisation and the manufacturing industry. In 1952, the introduction of numerical control (NC) , allowed machine and cutting tools to become automated, using punched paper tapes for control. During the 1970s, computers became part of the manufacturing system, enabling fully automated production lines, robot workers and new design and testing capabilities.

This essay considers the impact that computers have had on the manufacturing sector. It explores the major changes to the manufacturing process and how these have effected conventional working practices. It also examines the advantages and disadvantages of these changes and offers a view of where the future of manufacturing might lie.

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2. Changes in Working Practice

Work in the manufacturing industry is generally divided into five main sections, Management, Administration, Sales and Marketing, Production and Assembly and Design and Testing. This essay will primarily investigate the latter two sections, which are largely exclusive to manufacturing.

Production and Assembly

The introduction of computers to the production line has allowed the construction and assembly of parts to become increasingly automated. The punched paper tape used in numerical control has been replaced by computer programs controlling the work of machine tools (CNC), giving a greater accuracy and consistency of production of parts. Skilled human machinists are increasingly being replaced by CNC controlled machines and their unskilled operators.

In addition to machine tools, other areas of the production line are becoming automated. Robots often take the place of humans previously employed for the assembly of parts and construction of the finished product. Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) have been introduced where a computer has control of the entire production line. Machine tools, robots and conveyor belts are linked to the main computer, which not only controls the processes but is able to report the progress of each workpiece throughout the system.

Fig. 1 - Diagram showing how a single FMS cell is connected

These systems are also very adaptable and enable new products and specifications to be implemented by making simply inputting data to the FMS program software. This automatically updates the system and does not involve the retraining of staff or manual resetting of machinery.

Traditional Manufacturing	Computerised Manufacturing
Skilled manual workers operate lathes and cutting tools by hand, requiring both experience and training. Workers must have the ability and skill to adapt to changes in task specifications.	Unskilled or semi-skilled operatives oversee machine tools, programmed to automatically cut predetermined patterns and shapes. The job remains the same for the worker regardless of changing tasks carried out by the machine tools.
Unskilled and semi-skilled manual workers sort and assemble parts manually.	Sorting and assembly often carried out by computer controlled robots.
Most parts and assembled goods inspected as a part of the quality control process.	Programmed machine tools and robots produce work of a uniform quality and therefore only random quality testing is carried out. Some FMS systems incorporate their own quality control.
Fig 2 - Table outlining the major changes in the roles of manual workers

Design and Testing

The introduction of computers has also greatly changed the way design and testing of products is carried out. The conventional methods of drawing designs by hand and building prototypes for testing have been replaced by Computer-assisted Design Technologies (CAD). Engineering designers now work at computer screens, where they can draft and visualise the products they are designing. The two and three dimensional designs produced using CAD, can be quickly and easily modified, if required. CADs ability to simulate eventual performance has greatly decreased the time new products spend in the design and testing stage, which would normally have been expected to consume a major part of the overall manufacturing time. Using CAD has required Engineering Designers to have a computer literacy not previously necessary and has largely dispensed with the use of technical and engineering drawing, by hand, that was previously an essential skill.

Computer-assisted Manufacturing technologies (CAM), an extension of CAD design which determine the quantities of materials needed and instructions required to produce an item, have further changed the engineers role. Traditionally, engineers had to interpret their plans into working instructions for use on the production line and estimate quantities of raw material required.

The combination of CAD/CAM technology relies on the capability of computers to process, store, display and transmit large amounts of data, quickly and without degradation of quality or content. The combined technologies, often referred to as Computer-assisted Engineering (CAE), are able to give instructions directly to the FMS systems controlling the productions line, through Local Area Networks (LANs), without the need for human intervention or communication.

Traditional Manufacturing	Computerised Manufacturing
Engineering designers work with paper and drawing equipment, producing one or two dimensional diagrams and plans.	Engineering designers work at computers, using CAD software to produce two and three dimensional diagrams and plans.
Plans often have to be re-drawn from scratch if testing fails.	Using CAD, designs can be quickly and easily amended.
Engineering designers working in teams have to work simultaneously on one paper drawing or make amendments to photocopies.	Engineering designers can work simultaneously on the same design used shared resources and linked computers.
Testing of new products is carried out by building scale models or prototypes.	Testing is carried out using computer simulation offered by CAD technology.
Engineers are required to breakdown designs into parts, estimate raw materials required and write working instructions for production line workers.	CAM technology calculates raw materials required and transmits data containing instructions directly to the automated production line.
Fig 3 - Table comparing the work of designers and engineers before and after the introduction of computer.

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3. Advantages and Disadvantages

Section 2 has shown how the introduction of computers into the manufacturing process has changed jobs and the skills required. This section will look at the advantages and disadvantages of these changes and also those affecting the manufacturing companies themselves.

Employees

There is a widely held belief that the automation of the production line has resulted in both unemployment and a deskilling of the workforce. A research paper by Haskel and Heden, found that demand for unskilled labour in the UK manufacturing industry had considerably decreased as a direct result of computerisation and that even skilled labour was gradually being supplanted by machines. Other writers, such as Morton, writing for the "Economist" suggest that jobs are not disappearing, just changing, and that the workforce, in meeting the new needs of manufacturing, will learn new skills to replace the old ones. However, what is not disputed is that jobs, particularly on the production line have changed and that some skills and trades have become redundant.

Dr. Joseph Monroe, in his article "Computers and Work", suggests that the introduction of computers into manufacturing has greatly disadvantaged and demoralised the production workers, leaving them with boring and repetitive jobs, under constant monitoring and surveillance. He believes that computerisation has allowed management to exert a greater control over the workforce.

Advantages for employees include the undertaking of hazardous work being transferred to robots and some companies teaching their employees new skills to replace the redundant ones.

Manufacturers

Many manufacturer's argue that computers are an essential element of manufacturing and systems such as FMS are necessary to meet today's market demands for small batch production and to keep up with fierce competition and the pace of technological change. They suggest that computerisation offers the benefits of a consistent quality of products and a considerable speeding up of the manufacturing process, particularly in design and testing. As examples, Boeing, were able to cut the design and testing stage of their 777 aeroplane by 90% using CAD technology. The speeding up of the design and testing process often results in considerable savings to a company as Lockhead Martin report.

A disadvantage of computerised manufacturing is the huge capital outlay required to implement systems like FMS. The recouping of this capital is often slow and difficult to measure. Indeed several authors, including Paul Strassmann, writing for Computerworld, suggest that the the investment in computerised systems is not economically justified by gains in productivity.

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4. The Future

Computer-integrated Management

The manufacturing industry is moving toward the adoption of a new technology, Computer-integrated Management (CIM), which combines the design and manufacturing processes with maintenance and repair schedules, quality and stock control, administration, management and business planning. Using CIM, the entire manufacturing process, from the input of raw materials, power and orders to the output of the finished product, will be controlled by computers on LANs, making extensive use of shared databases.

Key: _____ Data _____ Materials _____ Finished Goods

Fig 4- An example of how the component processes and their interaction in a computer-integrated manufacturing might look in the future.

Artificial Intelligence

A disadvantage of CIM and CAE is seen to be that computers are incapable of human intelligence and are unable to learn by experience. As an example, a sensor on a production line might indicate that a certain part was faulty. An engineer, familiar with the production line might know that the sensor itself had a tendency to be faulty and use his judgement and experience to allow production to continue. A computer, without the benefit of human reasoning, would only be able to say the part was faulty and halt production. Advances in the field of computer programming languages are allowing the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence, which allows the computer to learn by constantly updating known facts with new events as they occur. International research and design team NGMS, have very recently announced that they will be investigating new manufacturing concepts based on principles of a biological organism capable of evolving and learning.

Intelligent Robots

In addition to advances in engineering allowing robots to become increasingly dextrous, it is envisaged that production line robots will eventually contain their own computers, programmed with artificial intelligence. This would allow robots to make decisions, independent of the central computer and control and adapt their performance to suit prevailing conditions and solve problems as they occur. Some experts predict that robots of the future will be sighted in a similar way to humans.

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5.Conclusion

Computers have undoubtedly had a major impact on the Manufacturing Sector, manufacturing processes and the way people work within the industry. Production run times have dramatically decreased, and the roles of workers, particularly manual, have changed. Some traditional skills and jobs have been taken over by robots and machines, whilst others have been replaced by new jobs requiring new skills. Computers have allowed manufacturers to keep pace with the changing demands of today markets, but some feel that the cost to workers has been too high and that productivity has not increased sufficiently to justify the huge capital investment required. There are many social and economic factors to consider when determining whether the overall advantages outweigh the disadvantages in what might be considered the inevitable introduction of computers into manufacturing.

Looking to the future, technological advances, such as those outlined in Section 5, seem to suggest that the manufacturing sector will become increasing automated and that the need for human involvement in the manufacturing process will recede. Some experts predict that the age of high human involvement in manufacturing is over and that the major employment areas of the future will be those dealing with information. The more optimistic suggest that we will live better lifestyles, working in clean, safe well-paid work, with an increased amount of leisure time. The pessimists, such as Rosenbrock, predict high unemployment and factories filled with robots, churning out products 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A more realistic picture is probably somewhere in the middle of these views, but that is something that only time, itself, will tell.

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