Directions in Engineering Research An Assessment of Opportunities and Needs (1987) / Chapter Skim
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6. Manufacturing Systems Research in the United States: An Overview
6. Manufacturing Systems Research in the United States: An Overview
Pages 216-238
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From page 216... ...
manufacturing competitiveness can be achieved through an increased awareness of the full scope and growing importance of manufacturing in the modern era, along with larger investments in related research and advanced education. Major elements of modern production systems are people, machines, computers, and the communication links among them.
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From page 217... ...
companies that could remedy this situation, a real gap in orientation and educational quality still exists between typical product development engineers and their counterparts in manufacturing. Furthermore, most manufacturing engineers now in practice, and even many new graduates, are ill-prepared to address electively the difficult problems to be faced on the path to true CIM systems.
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Great potential benefits are evident in product quality and cost, production efficiency, flexible response to changing needs, and improved health and safety conditions. Many forces are at work to make manufacturing systems more complex in the future.
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The nation is unlikely to achieve full employment without a strong, internationally competitive manufacturing capability. Steadily improving productivity in the manufacturing sector is essential to our national economic well-being.
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As manufacturing processes and end products become more complex, and as demands for flexibility increase, it is clear that computers will be an increasingly necessary element of integrated manufacturing systems. The term computer-integrated manufacturing implies that all relevant data are available throughout a network of computers, so that they can be used as needed to achieve desired overall results for the complete production system.
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of a complete production process probably will not be practical because of the large number of variables and many nonlinear, dynamic, and stochastic relationships. However, engineering strategies based on breaking down complex systems into hierarchies of simpler components have the potential to be practical and helpful.
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Computer simulation techniques are still evolving rapidly, driven by advances in hardware, simulation software, and process models. High-quality graphics provided with relatively inexpensive workstations surely will be widely exploited.
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Research is needed to establish principles or engineering guidelines that can help determine the optimum degree of flexibility for a manufacturing system. The man-machine interface must be greatly improved so that people involved in manufacturing can work effectively with vast information flows.
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UNIT PROCESSES Research on the individual unit processes that are combined to make up a complete manufacturing sequence has progressed well in many industries. Innovative improvements in materials and unit processes frequently result from the efforts of workers and the engineers who work closely with them.
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In the past, many manufacturing processes and products could be understood and evaluated with the unaided human senses; more and more frequently this is impossible. Any assessment of the health of manufacturing research and practice must begin with a recognition of these changes.
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Many career people in manufacturing lack the scientific and technological knowledge base, as well as the university and professional society contacts outside their own organizations, that are important stimuli to progress in fields such as aeronautics and electronics. Publications and conferences of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers are strong in their trade components and in traditional elements of manufacturing, but have not been highly elective in promoting research, in stimulating a systems approach to manufacturing, or in forging links between theory and practice.
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As a consequence, manufacturing techniques often vary considerably among firms producing similar end products, and there is no arena in which the merits of alternative techniques may be subjected to detailed comparisons. Manufacturing engineering lacks centers of focused research activity akin to the research laboratories of major firms in the communications, computer, and chemical industries, and the national centers for research in high-energy physics and materials science.
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This problem can be overcome if university administrators devote additional effort to the evaluation of individual contributions to large group efforts. Such differential assessments are routinely made with success in good industrial research laboratories.
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MCC conducts research programs primarily with its own facilities and staff, joined by staff members from participating companies. Its annual budget is about $50 million.
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The universities' output of manufacturing engineers was declining and industry continued to fill key positions with personnel Who know machinery," such as skilled tradesman. Graduates of 2- and Year institutes of technology provided another attractive option.
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We also recommend vigorous actions as follows to improve professional standards in manufacturing engineering: . More specialist workshops, larger and better supported conferences, more refereed professional-level publications, and strong management support for the participation of its engineers in these~activities are needed to place manufacturing engineering more nearly on par with the strongest engineering fields.
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The following actions should be taken by universities and their industrial supporters to improve the state of manufacturing engineering education: . Continued support should be developed and planned for university programs that specialize in coupled manufacturing education and research.
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At that time the Ford Foundation and the NSF established and funded the Semiconductor Electronics Education Committee. This group wrote a set of short, high-quality teaching texts that filled this critical need.
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Report prepared for the Office of Naval Research by the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., Cambridge, MA, December 1983. Haller, H
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The Automated Manufacturing Research Facility of the National Bureau of Standards. Journal of Manufacturing Systems 1~1~:17-32, 1982.
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, 10 professional organizations, and 9 federal agencies or laboratories. Some comments covered specific aspects of the panel's scope of activities, whereas others provided input on a variety of subjects.
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Society of Manufacturing Engineers Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers AGENCIES AND LABORATORIES Air Force Institute of Technology Air Force Office of Scientific Research Army Materials and Mechanical Research Center Army Research Office Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory NASA Goddard Space Flight Center NASA Langley Research Center Oak Ridge National Laboratory Sandia National Laboratories
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