M ANUFACTURING S YSTEMS

The basis for competition in manufacturing is changing rapidly and is no longer defined by national boundaries. It is global in scope, with the number of countries effectively competing for a piece of the world market steadily increasing daily. Companies that want to survive over the long term are striving to become world-class competitors. They are replacing obsolete methods, systems, and cultures with a competitive structure based on both technological and human resource utilization in the integration of all aspects of the manufacturing enterprise.

Many companies are actively introducing new initiatives in order to bring maximum value to their customers. Old factory management techniques are being reevaluated and being replaced with more efficient methods that will result in reducing delays, reducing cost, and improving overall quality. Lean manufacturing provides an overriding structure that can help to create a culture for change resulting in continuous improvement in all areas of production.

In today’s extremely competitive world, manufacturers that use machine tools need to improve their productivity by taking advantage of any new automation technology available. Every metalworking manufacturer must look for ways to reduce machining time, optimize labor efficiency, and reach higher levels of quality. Until now, automation technologies have been the key to minimizing costs and maintaining consistent quality. Now the question is, can the advances of the process control world and the networked office be applied to the shop floor? In other words, how can the automation be automated?

The goal is to create an “inter-networking” standard that makes every machine tool a node on the corporate communications network.

Connecting machine tools on the shop floor into an overall plant nervous system will unleash the information from each machine and allow management to increase profitability. This dynamic infrastructure extends information related to production beyond the factory floor. Machine tools then become servers of information in real time, feeding their information to other functions within the corporation anywhere in the world.

Giving every machine tool a hardware and software upgrade to enable it to host Internet Protocol (IP) addresses shatters the glass wall between the factory floor and the world that depends upon it.