Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing
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CADAM, or Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing, is one of a group of related acronyms which have emerged in recent years to describe related processes: the more extensive use of computers in industrial design and manufacturing, in such diverse forms as computerized drafting tables, "industrial robots," and driverless automatic freight vehicles. The following report is an outline of the functions and applications of CADAM and its related technologies in industry. The essential feature of CADAM is that it opens a fundamental new option in manufacturing, one intermediate between handbuilt "job shop" production and assembly line type mass production. As will be seen, it thus makes possible sharp increases in productivity and therefore sharp reductions in price for a great many types of industrial and consumer products. At a time when concern for productivity is particularly great, the importance of such a fundamental jump in productivity is clear (Jurgen 4-22). "Automation" is a long established concept, going back in some forms to the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Yet through most of that period, the actual application of automation was extremely limited. The whole cultural tradition of the factory worker as dominated and dehumanized by machines is in large measure a testimony to the limits of traditional automation. Individual machines at a factory might perform an automatic cycle when a single button was pressed, but a worker had to stand reader t
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a minute to do its job to the same component, that portion of the assembly line may be arranged with two lathes for each drill, so that all can be kept steadily busy. (With one drill to one lathe, the drill would sit empty half the time, "waiting" for the lathe.)
In short, an assembly line is optimized to produce its particular product. The efficiency of the assembly line, and its ability to reduce the price of its products, is well known. But the assembly line suffers from several limitations, all relating to its lack of flexibility. An assembly line imposes a strict production sequence; if one station along that sequence is taken out (for example, a particular machine is "down"), the whole production process jolts to a halt. It is seldom possible go arrange a way around such a gap. Moreover, production lines often have bottlenecks; in the example above, the loss of one lathe effectively sidelines two drills, not just one.
On a more strategic level, an assembly line is also inflexible. Even minor modifications in the final product may require extensive and costly rearrangements of the assembly line. For limited production runs, the cost of setting up an assembly line may outweigh the production efficiencies gained.
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Industrial Revolution, CAD/CAM CADAM, Design Manufacturing, Bowerman Fertig, CAM CAD's, assembly line, job shop, cadam technology, design manufacturing, CAD CAM, IEEE Press, industrial production, mass production, machine tools, Jurgen Ronald, Marcel Dekker, Nostrand Reinhold, job shop assembly, production efficiencies, assembly lines, simple example, computer aided manufacturing cam, shop assembly line,
Approximate Word count = 1877
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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