Manufacturing Control

Another category of CAM application is development of computer supported system for implementing the manufacturing control functions. These control functions manage and control the physical operation in the factory. These functions are as follows:

• Process Monitoring and Control

Process monitoring & control concerned with observing & regulating the production equipment of manufacturing processes in the plant. The applications of the process control are absorbed in automated production system. That involves the instance cases such as transfer line assembly system, robotics, NC, material handling & flexible manufacturing systems. All of these will be discussed later on. Process monitoring and the control functions are deployed to regulate the actions of several production equipments. Some of the well known control systems utilized in the industry are as follows.

Quality Control

There are varieties of approaches which assure highest possible quality level in the manufacturing system & products and these are included in quality control.

Shop Floor Control

Production management techniques for gathering data from factory operations and through using these data to help control production & inventory in the factory come within shop floor control. Shop floor control & computerized factory data collection systems are described in detail later on.

Inventory Control

The significant thing about inventory control is that it maintains the most suitable level of inventory in the face of two opposing objectives: minimizing the investment & storage cost of holding inventory & maximizing service to customer.

Just in Time Production System

A production system that is planned to deliver accurately the right number of each component to downstream workstations in the manufacturing sequence just at the time while that component is required is known as just in time production system. This term is applicable to manufacture operation & supplier delivery operation.