The Competitive Edge Research Priorities for U.S. Manufacturing (1991) / Chapter Skim
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Overview
Pages 3-24
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From page 3... ...
In a world that has come to expect zero defects and high reliability, manufacturing will move from a craft to a science, thereby requiring a much smaller work force that possesses multidisciplinary skills of a high order. Figures 1-1 to 1-3 show this projected decline in manufacturing employment to the year 2000.
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From page 4... ...
Monthly Labor Review (112:11~: 42-65.
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From page 5... ...
· its integration of information and materials handling and processing, which are separate in traditional automation; · its reliance on higher levels of human and machine intelligence rather than on the skill of operators; and · its placement of the production process largely under the control of computer programs into which product and process specifications are fed as computer instructions. Firms that use advanced manufacturing technology will thus be distinguished less by their manufacturing processes than by the integrated systems that drive those processes.
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From page 6... ...
A growing portfolio of products and processes, machines and operators, and extemal forces will provide multiple windows for viewing problems, creating a concomitant demand for broader experience. Time-to-market pressures that attend advanced manufacturing technology will drive organizations to compress their organizational hierarchy become flatter in order to push more responsibility down
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From page 7... ...
Product and process specifications that exist as computer instructions are highly transportable. Such transportability, together with the flexibility inherent in advanced manufacturing technology, creates a context in which a product can be produced anywhere, at home or abroad, by anyone with the requisite hardware.
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From page 8... ...
leadership in advanced technologies and, by extension, to national security. The report finds particularly devastating the erosion of production technologies and equipment in vitally important sectors such as machine tools and electronics manufacturing equipment {see Tables 1-3 and 1-4~.
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From page 9... ...
Third, manufacturing must enhance product characteristics for instance, by using advanced engineered materials to reduce weight, broaden service temperature capabilities, impart multifunctionality, or improve life cycle performance. Fourth, to speed time to market, manufacturing must employ product realization techniques and adopt organizational changes that foster effective use of these techniques.
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From page 10... ...
The catalyst of change may occur at any level, but a successful transition cannot be made unless the ramifications of change are assessed and accommodated at all levels. Advanced manufacturing technology will seldom yield the anticipated flexibility and/or productivity in an organization unless corresponding changes are made in the organization itself and in its information systems and resources.
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From page 11... ...
A THREE-PRONGED THEORETICAL BASIS The changes that attend the development and deployment of advanced manufacturing technology involve the availability of information and the integration of that information with business functions to achieve various kinds of inte77igence. Figures 1-6 through 1-10 illustrate, for each of the topics covered in subsequent chapters, representative forms of organizational intelligence that can be realized from integration of domain-specific information.
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From page 12... ...
PRODUCT REALIZATION · Business/Manufacturing Strategy · Knowledge of Product Design, Process Flow, Economic Analysis · Knowledge of Effects of Physical Transformation · Equipment and Process Performance Parameters · Equipment Availability Data 515114~''~`'~ · Product Images that Provide Multiple Views to Accommodate Multiple Perspectives of Participants in the Product Life Cvale Systems Architectures that Provide Open, Heterogeneous Environments · Models Capable of Monitoring Deviations in and Suboptimal Performance and Diagnosing Causes of Failure FIGURE 1-9 Organizational intelligence realized from integration of domain-specific information: Product realization.
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From page 13... ...
The enormous quantities of data include a variety of types of information. At the raw materials end are property data bases, performance data for critical parameters, and information on safety, environmental, economic, and educational factors.
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From page 14... ...
The product realization process {PRPJ relies on information on products and processes, control of equipment, and the effects of physical transformations of materials, as well as on the organization of production work, market and production problems, and variations in practice in different industries and national settings. Integration Information must be integrated into manufacturing operations at two levels: across process control and improvement, and across functions.
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From page 15... ...
Incorporation of the vast stores of data gathered by IMC systems facilitates the development of process models that express different views of the same circumstance at varying levels of abstraction; decision support, expert, and optimization systems; and logical models that relate disruptions to causes and are capable of learning. Pairing such developments with product realization yields product images that accommodate the multiple perspectives in the product life cycle; system architectures that provide open, heterogeneous environments; models capable of monitoring performance deviations and suboptimal performance and of diagnosing causes of failure; systems that encourage and foster nontraditional thinking; and organizational ability and incentives to be open to change.
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From page 16... ...
Trends in manufacturing competition and technological possibilities, for example, are driving firms to emphasize production flexibility in order to maximize their responsiveness to customers without sacrificing cost competitiveness. Nonmarket factors are outside forces such as national security, demographics, urban congestion, the regulatory regime, and social concerns over the integrity of the environment that force particular types of investments any technological developments.
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From page 17... ...
Because of the increasing importance of advanced manufacturing technology to international competitiveness, strong consideration also must be given to improving the U.S. technology skill base.
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From page 18... ...
Lack of Career Esteem The image of manufacturing as a career has not evolved at the same rate as the manufacturing environment. Despite the advanced manufacturing technology that requires operators with high-level, multidisciplinary skills, manufacturing retains a sweatshop image, characterized by dirty work in noisy environs.
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From page 19... ...
that relates resource utilization to process capacity, · knowledge of all the controllable parameters and constraints on production, - · a time scale for every controllable feedback and feed-forward loop, and · knowledge of the relationship between a set of controllables and a set of resources. As an example of costing events, contingencies, and process improvements, consider machine downtime.
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From page 20... ...
Intelligent Manufacturing Control Chapter 2 examines the tight coupling of sensor technologies and software systems that manifests machine intelligence when some degree of synergy with a human interface is achieved. A framework is established for thinking about IMC in terms of domains of control that correlate with a compressed organizational hierarchy and levels of feedback time.
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From page 21... ...
Technological problems that are associated with the implementation of ERM programs are considered to be more easily solved than are people problems. Advanced Engineered Materials Chapter 4 focuses on manufacturing involving advanced engineered materials {AEMs)
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From page 22... ...
VISION If the research proposed in this report is undertaken and proves fruitful, if manufacturing learns from and adopts the fruits of that research, if manufacturing gains well-deserved esteem, and if the nation proves equal to the task of redirecting and reinvigorating its educational system, manufacturing might achieve the vision summarized here.
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From page 23... ...
The plant will become a locus of learning; linkages among individual intelligent controllers will support a systemwide view of the interrelationships among unit operations in the manufacturing cycle, facilitating the timely sharing of important process revisions, quality information, and overall system objectives. Product realization techniques will increasingly substitute the content of a burgeoning knowledge base for traditional material inputs to the manufacturing process.
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From page 24... ...
World boundaries will be determined less by national affiliation than by class affinity for information categories. Production will increasingly be handled by highly skilled professionals functioning as components of human-machine cooperative systems, and integrally linked with management functions in a compressed {"flat")
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