Todav, automation of manufacturing revnives almost totally around the capability of the computer to provide automation, optimization and integration of all o f the diFferent elements of the manufacturing system, and o f the overall hystem itself. facturing Is today becoming called simply comnuter integrated manufacturing. current status and potential of such automation in the metalworking nnnufacturing industry is explored hy combining the results of a survev of the CIR1' Scientific Technical Committee on Optimizatlon mernhers' estimates and iactual data with information derlved hoth from recent literature and From the author's personal observation o i such automation throughout the world. while implementation of such automation is still In its infancv. the expected rate 01 its prowth is very substantial. implementation of this technology. and Its notentla1 for Further benefit. both economlr and social, is very large indeed. This generic ultimate approach to automation of manu-In thiq paper, the The resulting apnraisal reveals that Further, even at this early stage, tremendous economic benefits are being reaped from 1 WR0DL:CTTOX ..-I___ Today, when we speak n f automation in the metalworkin8 manufacturing industry, we almost invariab1.y mean, implicitly, rlexible autonation. truly flexible automation of metalworking manufacturing was nothing but a dream. Yet flexibility was esaentjal if manufacturing was ever eolng to be truly automated. Of course, in true mass-production-type manufacturing, where hundreds of thousands or even miLiions of identical parts and products are all that is required. 'hard, inflextble automation can be applied -and has been since the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Hut most manufacturing is not of the mass production type. For example, it has been said that even in the Ihited States -probably the largest practitioner o i inass-production-type manufacturing in the world --75 percent oF the parts produced by metalworking are produced in lots consisting or lens than 50 pieces! >loat manufacturing is of a type which must deal with a large and constantly changing variety of items to be produced. Here, flow or materials and parts, activities to he performed, amounts of work to be done, etc. are in a constant and virtually unpredictable state O F flux. Ohvioosly, to automate such nn enterprise requires highly versatile. Flexible automation. Until recent years, there was no known universal approach to obtaining such automation -the technology just did not exist. The advent of the digital computer changed that sftuat ion dramatically .
L'ntil the advent of the digital computer, h'hy is the computer able to do this? The reasons are three-fold. Plrst is the fact that the computer has unique potential to provlde manufacturing with two powerful capahilitiea, never before availahle, namely: