Future Automated Factory
The concept of the automated factory is usually applied in the context of discrete product manufacturing and in connection with products that are made in medium or small batch sizes. The factory of the future shall have to perform fundamental manufacturing functions such as processing, assembly, material handling & storage, inspection, and control.
In the automated factory the objective is to attain a level of untended integrated operation similar to that which at present exists in a computer-controlled production plant which processes chemicals, foods, petroleum and other certain metals. In such a plant, there exists a comparatively small crew of perhaps 5 or 10 persons who observe the production operations. These people carry out maintenance & repair functions on the equipment, programming of the computer systems, by monitoring the computer controlled processes, activities which involve interactions along the plant security, outside world, and general supervision.
In the discrete-product manufacturing industries, complicated problems are encountered in attaining the same level of automation due to the difficulties in processing, handling, assembling and inspecting a diverse mix of products. In the multiproduct situation, the major difficulty in the manufacturing is the big amount of information that should be processed for each of different product made.
Each component in the product contains its material definition, unique geometry specification, and processing route sheet. For the product itself, there are parts lists, assembly drawings, operating specifications, and so on. Production schedules ought to be formulated, materials have to be ordered, labour and equipment ought to be planned, and so it goes. It has been estimated that only regarding one-eighth of the people in the factory are directly concerned with processing the product, when the remaining seven-eighths are handling and processing information. It is the information system in the future factory that shall implement the control function in manufacturing.