Information Technology for Manufacturing A Research Agenda (1995) / Chapter Skim
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1 Vision and Recommended Areas of Research
1 Vision and Recommended Areas of Research
Pages 12-48
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From page 12... ...
Suggestions abound, but in the absence of a clear strategy in this area, federal decision makers have struggled to find the right mix of investment in manufacturing research. This quandary has extended beyond the funding agencies to the universities and to academic research.
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From page 13... ...
To realize these and other products, manufacturing firms must cope with design processes (e.g., converting customer requirements and expectations into engineering specifications, converting specifications into subsystems) , production processes (e.g., moving materials, converting material properties or shapes, assembling products or subsystems, verifying process results)
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From page 15... ...
Purpose, Scope, and Content of This Report This study was conducted to identify areas of information technology-related research needed to support future manufacturing. The committee chose to define manufacturing broadly as the entire product realization process, from specification through design and production to marketing and distribution.
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From page 16... ...
, 4 (shop floor production', 5 (factory modeling and simulation) , 6 (information infrastructure issues)
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From page 17... ...
To date, the primary uses of information technology in manufacturing have been to control machinery and tools on the shop floor, to assist with administration in areas such as accounting and bookkeeping, to speed the transfer of information, and to support the management of product and process complexity (e.g., through computer-aided design (CAD) or manufacturing resources planning)
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From page 18... ...
Hence, large models (e.g., usefulness of the items aircraft or automobile bodies) sent communicated quickly, permitting designers states or continents apart to collaborate more easily Manufacturing Technology Sensors Mostly analog Heavily digital Recording Chart recorders Computer-readable media media Control logic Mostly classical control Classical control theory still used; and machine theory (as exemplified by modern control theory (state space controller the proportional-integral- analysis)
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From page 19... ...
; computer-aided engineering models of mechanical parts and assemblies used to simulate kinematic analysis Products largely standard, with few options for buyers Exhaustive testing of physical models "Over-the-wall" engineering, with market research, product design, and production working in isolation Long face-to-face meetings between participants to address problems requiring attention by more than one department in a company Higher degree of variety and customization possible Computerized simulation and engineering analysis as substitutes for much physical testing; physical testing now used primarily as a final .
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From page 20... ...
Contingency Scheduling software Software giving many shop floor management task-oriented and not personnel access to constantly updated responsive to contingencies: information on status of machines, software told what was to location of breakdowns, and schedule be done, and the human realization operator was expected to carry out the task Relationship between product nonconcurrently engineering and product release Systems completely separate Systems still separate, but operating and functioned concurrently Information Paper traveled with the In many factories, bar-code flow product through assembly identification of parts moving through lines production that keep track of their positions and tell machinery which steps to perform; bar codes, coupled with digital status keeping, often used to develop systems that minimize "guess work" on inventory levels and improve use of assets · Information technology will facilitate appropriate reuse of knowledge (e.g., reusing the design of a previously produced part rather than designing a new one from scratch) , thus enabling decision makers to build on precedents and past decisions that have subsequently been validated by experience.
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From page 22... ...
What is it that gives rise to the committee's belief that information technology will be the basis of the next paradigm shift in manufacturing and a source of enhanced productivity? The most straightforward answer is that the world has changed.
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From page 23... ...
23 1~ ~ .._ ~ ~ . ~ ~ _ , Balancing Current Needs and the Development of Future Capabilities At the same time that it acknowledges IT's promise, the committee also recognizes very clearly that for good and proper reasons, managers of manufacturing enterprises are much more concerned about turning out products today than about improving their operations tomorrow.
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From page 24... ...
In concrete terms, the outcome of the first wave of CIM was mostly the installation of computerized machinery and robot arms on the factory floor, often in inappropriate applications or without the necessary expertise to use these systems. Much of the initial CIM investment provided a poor return, and today true computer-integrated manufacturing is far from commonplace in U.S.
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From page 25... ...
For example, a deeper basic understanding about materials and fluid behavior may be needed to support new fabrication processes or to improve old ones.5 A deeper basic understanding about fatigue and corrosion may be necessary to support product designers attempting to reduce maintenance requirements. A deeper basic understanding of relations between tolerances and function may be key to developing new assembly and shaping processes to be controlled by IT.
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From page 26... ...
THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON THE MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE The Broad Vision In a future manufacturing enterprise characterized by ubiquitous and integrated computing, IT will be important in every aspect of manufacturing. Computers will be everywhere-on factory floors, in products, in offices, in wholesale and retail outlets, in homes, and on the street.
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From page 27... ...
scenarios; Time to market, through the analysis and use of appropriate "what if" · Factory layout, through the use of virtual factory models; · Capacity and asset utilization, through the use of intelligent schedulers and rapidly reconfigurable factories; · Yield, through the use of adaptive process control; · Times for product and process transfer, through the direct transfer of design information to the production process; · Matching product features and capabilities to customer needs, through increased customization and feasibility of economic small-lot production; · Hands-on training, through the use of realistic models; · Equipment performance, through use of expert systems and artificial intelligence technology; and · Reduction in inventory and working capital, through better scheduling and forecasting algorithms. Improvements in the areas above through the use of IT would represent a fundamental paradigm shift from today's manufacturing enterprise, one that may already be under way (as suggested by Appendix B)
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From page 28... ...
The designer would be able to specify a product in terms of function and performance rather than in terms associated directly with the production process (e.g., shape, tolerances, electrical inputs)
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From page 29... ...
The process designer would be able to specify a manufacturing process unambiguously and in ways that would yield information about, for example, its efficiency in advance of its actual deployment. Information technology would enable the process designer to identify the right manufacturing, assembly, and test processes for creating and verifying the elements of a product and matching them to specifications for functional behavior.
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From page 30... ...
If a product's specifications changed, the process model would be refined by the process designer, and such refinements would be reflected in the production line. When necessary, process designers would be able to modify manufacturing processes adaptively, taking advantage of the knowledge available at every step in a factory's entire manufacturing process in order to improve yield at a subsequent or preceding step.
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From page 31... ...
Information would be embedded in parts and products and read by material-handling, shaping, assembling, and processing equipment, further automating the flow of materials and work in process. Parts would be selfidentifying not only in the production process but also throughout the life of the product.
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From page 32... ...
The ability of automated shop floor tools to undertake self-diagnosis and self-correction of routine problems would improve reliability and reduce the need for people to tend such tools. The extensive simulation capabilities of detailed factory models would enable companies to design facilities that incurred minimal operational difficulties and to train new employees in the use, maintenance, and repair of complex equipment without risking the cessation of factory operations.
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From page 33... ...
This practice, known as "pay on production," is increasingly common in the auto industry, because it lowers supply chain carrying costs that have created an artificial focus on inventory and it increases team play and product quality. In computerized manufacturing, a supplier's own fabrication processes would easily accommodate changes required by the manufacturer.
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From page 34... ...
Implementation of these capabilities would also have profound implications for the workplace that would have to be addressed in a socially responsible manner. The longer-term concepts of a virtual factory and a programmable or reconfigurable factory as outlined below would embody IT to such an extent that the very character of manufacturing would be fundamentally altered.
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From page 35... ...
In control mode, the factory model would actually control and run the operation of the real factory through manipulation of the objects in the virtual factory. Operating procedures and scheduling protocols would be validated in the virtual factory and then applied in or transferred to the 9 Factory operation model development and testing are very different from process model development and testing in the sense that the disruption of an entire factory can be catastrophic for a firm's productivity.
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From page 36... ...
Coupled to appropriate computer-based reasoning and decision-support tools, a virtual factory operating in control mode would be capable of a significant amount of self-diagnosis. Driven by data from the real factory, the virtual factory would be able to analyze the performance of the entire factory continuously to determine the potential for optimizing operations to reduce costs, reduce production time, improve quality, or reuse materials.~° For example, the virtual factory would be able to use the data collected by a factory monitoring system, analyze potential and actual failures, and identify the cause of a problem.
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From page 37... ...
Different software instructions would direct tool and machine controllers to perform different operations and to deliver different items to different work cells in different sequences. Although a single factory almost certainly could not produce computers and cars on different days, a highly programmable factory, in conjunction with new and more flexible fabrication processes, could produce cars in one week and trucks in the next week; the Toyota Motor Company does this in Taiwan today.
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From page 38... ...
A Ocularly important improvement would be a reduction of the time it takes a production facility to initiate the first step needed to respond to an order, since it is this time that often dominates the overall time required to fill an order. Enabled through the National Information Infrastructure, networked factories would increase the options available to product and process designers.
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From page 39... ...
Designers using a networked factory would be able to "outsource" various production processes more easily and to coordinate their operation. Of all the different modern concepts in manufacturing, the idea of a networked enterprise including a networked factory is perhaps the most widely accepted and adopted; in some circles, the term "agile manufacturing" is also used.
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From page 40... ...
GETTING FROM HERE TO THERE THE NEED FOR BALANCE AND A CONSIDERED APPROACH The various new manufacturing capabilities described above are tantalizing and appeal to many current notions of the progress possible in manufacturing. But for this vision to be realized, it will be necessary first to balance the responsibilities of factory managers and manufacturing decision makers to turn out quality products at low cost in a timely manner today against the desirability of planning to secure the potentially large improvements offered by judicious and innovative use of current and future information technology.
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From page 41... ...
· How will research results, such as new fabrication processes, be converted into economical and reliable factory equipment? The same question applies to the conversion of new design algorithms into easy-to-learn CAD software.
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From page 42... ...
That said, however, the committee has identified several general themes for technology research that would advance the capabilities of information technology to serve manufacturing needs; these themes include product and process design, shop floor control, modeling and simulation ("virtual factory") technology, and enterprise integration as it affects factory operations and business practices.
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From page 43... ...
Shop Floor Control By automating processes, extending the uses of sensors, and improving scheduling, information technology can play a vital role in improving the flow of material and the routine control functions of machine tools, robots, automated guided vehicles, and many other basic machines on the factory floor.
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From page 44... ...
Effective real-time, dynamic scheduling of factory operations on the shop floor remains a major problem but has great potential for improving factory performance. Dynamic scheduling is desirable because management priorities for production must be balanced moment to moment against circumstances prevailing in a plant and in the manufacturer's supply chain (e.g., sudden changes in conditions generated by drifts in machine capability, material shortages, unplanned equipment downtime, delays in arrival of necessary components)
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From page 45... ...
All objects in a real factory, whether they are pieces of equipment, product lots, human resources, process descriptions, data and information packets, or facilities, must have direct counterparts in the virtual factory; indeed, the actual production facility in which raw materials are transformed into physical products is itself one level of abstraction in a comprehensive virtual factory model. The boundaries of the virtual model must be flexible, capable of incorporating activities outside the factory or focusing only on entities within the factory structure as necessary for analytical purposes.
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From page 46... ...
A concrete demonstration of these capabilities would be the creation of a platform capable of comparing the results of real factory operations with the results of simulated factory operations using information technology applications such as those discussed in this report. For modeling and simulation to serve manufacturing needs, two broad areas of research stand out for special attention: the development of information technology to handle simulation models in a useful and timely manner, and capture of the manufacturing knowledge that must be reflected in the models.
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From page 47... ...
Indeed, much of today's manufacturing information technology can be characterized as islands of automation that are unable to communicate with each other due to incompatibilities in their representation of largely similar information. Enabling intercommunication will require the development of appropriate ways of explicitly representing information related to products, fabrication processes, and business processes, as well as how each element relates to itself and to other elements.
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From page 48... ...
Data, information, and decisions need to be communicated accurately across the breadth and depth of manufacturing organizations. Many mechanisms can contribute to enhancing communication, including sabbatical programs for industrialists and academics in each other's territory, teaching factories, and advanced technology demonstrations that illustrate how the use of information technology can benefit factory performance.
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