Computers in Industrial Manufacturing

The manufacturing industries have been undergoing a wonderful change due to the advancements that are taking place in many of the allied fields. The most significant advancement that is becoming increasingly important is the advancements in microelectronics. The ever rising advancements in microelectronics are allowing for automation in various facets of manufacturing.

In general, we can expect computers to be used in manufacturing in two possible ways:

(A) Computer monitoring and control of the manufacturing process.

(B) Manufacturing support applications, which deal basically with the preparations for actual manufacturing and post-manufacture operations?

In the first category are the applications of computers for controlling various parts of a continuous flow manufacturing such as a cement plant or a petrochemical manufacturing unit. These will be in principle similar to the computer control of a modern fully automatic washing machine. In these cases the control algorithm will be completely embedded in the form of a computer with the necessary hardware (sensors, relays, etc.) and software within the controller. In most of the cases, generally such control will be prefixed with very little control, except for some of the options that may be present within, such as different wash or rinse cycles in the case of an automatic washing machine.

Our interest is actually in the second part of the computer application, since a majority of the manufacturing that we will be interested in is the discrete part manufacturing. In this particular case, computer will be used in a majority of the components that will be used in the total manufacturing cycle of a given product. But to understand the role of computer it is essential to get the nature of operations that are involved in the product manufacture.