Inspection Systems

The inspection function is to become more automated in the future as quality continues to remain a high-priority issue. Current trends in automated inspection recommend that the future factory shall be characterized in the quality control area by following:

• Inspection procedures shall be integrated into the production process to compose a closed loop feedback control system. Processing fault detected in inspection shall be corrected on line so that much closer to 100% good product must be achieved.
• Automated inspection methods shall permits the use of 100% inspection of production output instead of the sampling inspection procedures.
• Noncontact sensors, such like machine vision & other optical techniques, shall come into extensive use in automated inspection.
• Computer-controlled inspection technologies might be adapted to varying product configurations shall grow in significance in the future automated factory.

The future automated factory will be an extension of today's Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS). One might let the automated factory to be a extremely large FMS.

Although, the problems of operating & controlling the automated manufacturing system become considerably larger as the production capacity of the system enhance. There are practical limits that should be imposed on the size of the factory.

The targeted factory is one that concentrates its efforts "on a restricted, concise, manageable set of, technologies, products, volumes, and markets". The future automated factory is probable to be a focused factory, restricted its activities to certain families of products which might be produced by using a limited set of processing technologies.

Effectively the focused factory utilizes a modified version of the principle of standardization. There is opportunity for standardization even in the production of small to medium lot sizes of diverse products. These opportunities include following:

• Design Standards: CAD/CAM system tends to promote standardization by making it into the design software.
• Raw Materials: Products might be selected so that the variety of raw materials is restricted to a confined set.
• Tooling: Several plants tend to allow the variety of tooling to rise out of hand. It must be possible to restrict the numbers of different types of tooling & other supplies that are utilized.
• Processes and Methods: The variety of manufacturing processes & methods included in shop practice is restricted to a manageable set.