"Automate, emigrate, legislate or evaporate." This was a choice many manufacturers.Some manufacturers tried to lower prices by reducing manufacturing costs. They either automated or emigrated.Many countries legislated trade barriers to keep high quality, low cost products out. Manufacturers who did nothing... disappeared, often despite their own government's protective trade barriers.Many consumers still choose imports over domestic products, but some North American manufacturers are nowtrying more thoughtful measures to meet the challenge.Automation is a technique that can be used to reduce costs and/or to improve quality. Automation can increasemanufacturing speed, while reducing cost. Automation can lead to products having consistent quality, perhaps evenconsistently good quality. Some manufacturers who automated survived. Others didn't. The ones who survivedwere those who used automation to improve quality. It often happened that improving quality led to reduced costs.

0.2 THE ENVIRONMENT FOR AUTOMATION

Automation, the subject of this textbook, is not a magic solution to financial problems. It is, however, a valuabletool that can be used to improve product quality. Improving product quality, in turn, results in lower costs.Producing inexpensive, high quality products is a good policy for any company.But where do you start?Simply considering an automation program can force an organization to face problems it might not otherwise face:

What automation and control technology is available?

Are employees ready and willing to use new technology?

What technology should we use?

Should the current manufacturing process be improved before automation?

Should the product be improved before spending millions of dollars acquiring equipment to build it?

Automating before answering the above questions would be foolish. The following chapters describe the availabletechnology so that the reader will be prepared to select appropriate automation technology. The answers to the lasttwo questions above are usually "yes," and this book introduces techniques to improve processes and products, buteach individual organization must find its own improvements.

Chapter 0. Introduction

0.2.1 Automated Manufacturing, an Overview

Automating of individual manufacturing cells should be the second step in a three step evolution to a differentmanufacturing environment. These steps are:

Simplification of the manufacturing process. If this step is properly managed, the other two stepsmight not even be necessary. The "Just In Time" (JIT) manufacturing concept includes proceduresthat lead to a simplified manufacturing process.

Automation of individual processes. This step, the primary subject of this text, leads to theexistence of "islands of automation" on the plant floor. The learning that an organization does at thisstep is valuable. An organization embarking on an automation program should be prepared to acceptsome mistakes in the early stage of this phase. The cost of those mistakes is the cost of trainingemployees.

Integration of the islands of automation and other computerized processes into a totalmanufacturing and business system. While this text does not discuss the details of integratedmanufacturing, it is discussed in general in this chapter and again. Technical specialists should beaware of the potential future need to integrate, even while they embark on that first "simplification"step.The large, completely automated and integrated environment shown in figure 0.1 is a Computer IntegratedManufacturing (CIM) operation. The CIM operation includes:

Computers, including:ione or more "host" computersiiseveral cell controller computersiiia variety of personal computersivProgrammable Controllers (PLC)vcomputer controllers built into other equipment

Manufacturing Equipment, including:irobotsiinumerical control machining equipment (NC, CNC, or DNC)iiiconntrolled continuous process equipment (e.g., for turning wood pulp into paper)ivassorted individual actuators under computer control (e.g., motorized conveyor systems)vassorted individual computer-monitored sensors (e.g., conveyor speed sensors)vipre-existing "hard" automation equipment, not properly computer-controllable, butmonitored by retro-fitted sensors