Social and Economic Forces

The trend toward the future automated factory appeared unavoidable in modern industrialized societies. There are various social & economic factors that promote the development of such a factory. These include following:

• Necessity to increase machine utilization
• The economic obligation to increase productivity
• The high cost of in-process inventory
• The need to decrease the wastes
• The desire to decrease manufacturing lead times to respond more rapidly to customers demands
• The requirements to use raw materials & energy as efficiently as possible
• Worker safety
• The trends in the labour force to discover the employment in service sector and not in manufacturing.

These factors constituted in the driving force behind the growth of automated assembly machines, NC, transfer lines, and other automated production systems of now a day are also the force for added advances, culminating in the computer-automated factory of the future.