Systems and control

AMT describes the significant impact of computers on manufacturing. Computer technology has led to the development of computer aided design(CAD/CAM), robotics, materials-handling devices and computer-integrated manufacture (CIM) systems

That have increased the accuracy and flexibility of the manufacturing process.

AMT has also had an impact on manufacturing managment woth the integration of product development and manufacturing stages through the use of ICT.

Computer technology features strongly in automation used in modern manufacturing systems.

QRM-was developed to give companies a competitive advantage by increasing their operating efficiency.

It requires a manufactuer to move from traditional bath production to flow production. This flow production is triggered by consumber demand and not based on complex demand forecasts. By operating this system, a manufacturer can quickly respond to fluctuations in the economy and ever-changing market demands as well as avoiding excess stockpiling of products, which coast money.

QRM involves serveral concepts=TQM, JIT and manufacturing cells but its main aim is to increase the overall flexibility and responsiveness of the company.In the ideal QRM situation, the manufacturer would begin production as soon as order is initated suppliers would deliver raw materials directly to the production line, the product would be manufactured and the finished goods would flow directly to a waiting truck for delivery. Therfore the primary functions of QRM are to pull raw materials through the production process strictly according to market demands and to ensure that every product component and order moves as quickly as possible through out the entire supplu chain.

Advantages -Reduces cost of quality by minimising waste by placing more responsibilty teams.

Lower working capital required as raw material and finished goods stocks are minimised.

Better position to increase market share as quicker response times will attract new clients.

Disadvantages-Increased reliance on suppliers in order to react to demand and quickly accommodate production schedules.

 Poor ssupply-inability to meet customer requirments.

Managing TQM and implementing it can be hard.

Implenting TQM can take time money etc..

In order to remain competitive and cope with increasing market pressure from mounting customer demands, manufacturers need to get market first with products that customers want.

Concurrent manufacturing provieds a systematic approach to the integration of design, manufacture and related processes where all life cycle stages of the product are considered simultaneously. One of the main advantages of a concurrent manufacturing system is that it produces designs right first time through the multi-disciplinary design teams, reduces product development times and enables the earlier release of new products.

The problems with product development performance that a concurrent manufacturing system aims to overcome are those of the traditional sequential product development process in which people from different departments work one after the other on sucessive phases of developent. Traditionallu the product is firstly completely defined by the design department, after which the manufacturing process is defined by the manufacturing department. usually slow costly and low quality approach.

A concurrent manufacturing system, however brings together members from a wide range of disciplines such as manufacturing, project managment, technical support, marketing and other specialist areas who are integraated with the designers to form a multi-disciplinary team.

Multi-disciplinary teams acting together early in the workflow can take decisions relating to product, process, cost and quality issues. they can make trade offs between design features material needs etc.

Computer based systems enable efficent communication between indiviual team members and integrated project teams for productt development. For manufacturing companies operating at a national, or international, level a computer network is essential to support data transfer between team members. Combining concurrent manufacturing systems, effective managment and teamwork ensures the development of a high quality and reliable product with low life cycle costs in the shortest development time

Early in the development stage-designers can use quality function development(QFD) a strategy for remaining 'in touch' with customer requirements in order to create a more sucessful product.Lead time has proved to be a significant aspect of modern competition. By decreasing the lead time a company is ablke to respond to rapidly to changes in market trends or new technologies.

QFD is a quality assurance method that factors customer satisfaction into the development of a product before it is manufactured. The main features of QFD are its focus on customer requirments, the use of multi-disciplinary teamwork and comprehensive 'House of Quality' matrix. This matrix is used by the team to translate customer requirements into number of prioritised targets to be met by the new product design.

Advantages

reduce time to market, reduction in design modifications, improved product quality enchanced customer satisfaction

A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a form of flexible automation in whic serveral machines are linked together by a material- handling system, with all aspects of the sustem controlled by a cetral computer.

An FMS brongs together new manufacturing technologies such as computer numerically controlled (CNC), automated material handling...etc To form an integrated system. It is different from an automated production line because of its ability to process more than one product style simultaneously.

FMS have powerful computing capacities that give them the ability not only to control and coordinate the individual equipment items and facilities, but also to perform production planning and routing of meterial through the system.

The system has two main features.

Machine flexibility-Involves the systems ability to be able to change to produce new product types, and ability to change the order of operations executed on a part,

Routing Flexibility-involves the ability to use multiple machines to perform the same operation on a part, as well as the system ability to absorb large scale changes, such as in volume, capacity or capability.FMS vary in their complexity and size. Some are designed to be very flexible and to produce a wide variety of parts in very small batches. Others have the ability to produce single complete product in large batches from a sequence of many indivdual operations know as flexible transfer line.

The advantages of FMS include-Increased productivity due to automation, shorter lead times for new products, lower labour cost.Disadvantages of flexible- setting up system invovles great amount of pre planning.

CIM takes the concept of integration of separate manufacturing technologies developed by FMS a step further by bringing together all aspects of a companys operations, not just those that are directly involved in manufacture.

Under CIM system uses computer networks to integrate the processing of production and business information with manufacutring operations to create cooperative and smooth-running production lines. The tasks performed with CIM with include,

• Design of product using cad
• Planning the most cost effective work forse
• controlling the operations and equipmentt to manufacture products

Drawbacks- dependance upon computer data to carry out the operations

Product data management PDM is an information system used to manage the data for a product as it passes from design to manufacture.

PDM also manages the inter-relationships between the data so that when changes are made to one database, the effects are highlighted in the others.

PDM systems support production planning by the development, distribution and use of product data. The focus is on managing and tracking the creation, change and archive of all information related to a product.

For instance the design of a component may go through many changes during the course of development, each involving modifacations to CAD data. Once the designer is satisfiedwith the components, PDM systemmay notify an analyst that the design is ready for them to perform a stress analysis on it.

When the task is complete, the stress analyst performs an electronic signoff. The PDM system will then notify a manufacturing engineer.

The advantages of a product data management PDM system include

• Reduced time to market-as data is instantly available to all teams for review.

• improved productivity- as changes to the product data are tracked , reducing the time taken to search.

• Improved control-due to efficent management systems that ssure everyone is working from the most current data.

ERP systems attempt to integrate all departments and data across a company onto a single computer system that can serve all those different departments particuler needs by using a unified database.

ERP improves the way in which a company takes a customer order or processes it into an invoice and revenue. ERP takes a customer order and processes it into an invoice and revenue. EPR takes a customer order and provides a software 'road map' for automating different steps along the path to fulfilliing it. An example of such a road map is when a customer order is entered into an EPR system all the informathion necessary to complete the order is instantly acessable such as the customers credit rating and order history from fiance department.

EPR systems are expensive to install, The problem with ERP it requires alot of training of workforce.

Lean manufacturing is as the name suggest a manufacturing where there is no fat. A key feature of lean Man... is the notion of JIT.that is there are no warehouse full of materials waiting to be used.

The objective of lean manufacturing is to provide techniques that ensure minimum waste is incurred during production and to produce products only when they are needed.

A lean organistion needs to be tailored so that orders are pulled through the production system. A kanban system uses cards, or containers as simple visiual signals to indicate when to pull materials, components or products through the production system.

5 key stages of lean manufacturing.

1.value-what the customer is paying for

2.value stream-identify how value adding and  no value adding affects efficieny

3.flow-design process

4. pull-manufacturiing the design

5.perfection-adopt an approach that are continually improves working processes by adding greater value and reducing waste.