State-of-the-Art Dreams, Nightmares Jozsef Hatvany Computer and Automation Insite, Hungarian Academy of Se ences H-1502, POB 83, Budapet Hungary This is @ phenomenological sursey of the history of com the last thirty imminent push-button Factory, contolle by a central computer. Then, the nighimare experiences of the first pioneers, contending simultaneously with inadequate hardware, software, skill, Funding, receptivity fand their own underestimation of the extra. dimension of unprecedented interdisciplinary compleity. Finally today's realities: the possiblies opened up by distributed multi processor systems, by local area networks and by advanced systems synthesis techniques, the limitations imposed by invest i edueation, employment and environmental consigera pter-controlled manufacturing, systems over years Fits, came the dreams of Keywords: CAM, Push-button factory rocesor systems, local area networks distributed mult + This paper was frst presented at CAPE ‘83, as an “Tovited Paper Hoasel Hatvany was educated mostly in Brain, and studied Physics at Trin iy College, Cambridge. In 1987, he furned to Hungary, Jézse! Hatvany has worked mainly on the design and timplementation of CAD/CAM ys tems and thee major subsystems — in cluding NC. DNC. computer eraphies and CAD. For 10 years, he has headed the Mechanical Engineering Division, Computer and Automation Institte atthe Hungarian Academy of Sciences (ith one sear off in 1994 as are: search scholar atthe International Tasttate Tor Applied Sy= tems Analysis) He is now senor adviser to his Institue iy «ddvion, he is. member of several Editorial Boards, and ‘ntematinal scientific bodies (including IFIP TC 5), and isa fcelpient of the TFIP iver Core Award and the fiungatian State Prow for Science and Technology Noni Holland Corsputsrs in Endstry 4 (1983) 109-114 (648615 /83/ 09 and Reality 1. Dreams ‘All round us, in numberlse colourful shapes A multi Ovid: Metamoephones X1 “All dreams said Freud [1], “are in the k resort, fulfillments of our desires”. At the time “an essential characteristic of the dream is manifest discrepancy between dream images and external reality” [2}. Treating these two basic tenets of contemporary psychology as the premis- ses of a syllogism, we must conclude that the fulfillment of our desires is, at least in the tem: poral locus of their emergence, generally at odds with external reality. The first phases in the history of computer-controlled manufacturing systems ap- pear to substantiate this conclusion. “The most obvious answer to the problem of automatic production would seem to be to build one large, completely automatic machine that would perform every operation necessary 10 con- vert the raw materials into the finished product [3]. This was quite typical of early thinking about the automated factory, and indeed, factories em: bodying this principle were planned and built both in the Soviet Union (a fully automated auto- mobile piston factory producing 3500 identical pistons a day, attended by 9 workers, commis- sioned in 1950), and in the United States (for manufacturing 150-mm steel shell casings, com- missioned in 1951). Both these plants extensively used the new results in feed-back and remote control, sensor techniques and electronic counting, devices, which had been developed during World War Il and which we may regard as the first, embryonic manifestations of the later computer control technologies. By 1952, however, it was clearly realized that “fully automatic, single-purpose machines ... are suited only to ... the case of an extremely large run of a nonvarying product”, and so a new and more flexible concept was proposed: “if we could 3.00 © 1983 Elkever Science Publishers BV. (North-Holland)110 State-of-the-Art couple a group of production machines ... by some form of inexpensive and flexible materials- handling equipment and add a control mechanism ‘we would have a factory completely automatic in terms of direct operation ...” (3], John Diebold, the author of these quotes, in fact prepared a feasibility study for another piston factory, but this time designed to make any variety of pistons and — most important ~ with machines “con- trolled in part by their own built-in operating controls and, in an over-all manner, by a small digital computer ...” {4} There was, of course, in 1952 no “small digital computer”, there was no “inexpensive and flexible ‘materials-handling equipment” and there were no machines with “built-in operating controls” of the kind that were to prove necessary for such a purpose. (The Arma Corporation in New York had just “demonstrated an automatic lathe con- trolled by a punched paper tape”, Diebold tells us “Unfortunately this control has not been pro duced commercially, because the attention of the firm has been directed to the further development of gun-directing devices” [3] The first dream had been dreamt. There was indeed a manifest dis- cepaney between the dream images and external reality. But it was the dream, not “reality” that pointed to the future. Commercial development of NC machines may, indeed, have been postponed by the Korean Wer. But 1952 also saw the publi cation of the first report on the successful MIT project for a numerically controlled milling mac- hhine [5], and it was in 1951 that D-T-N. William: son first began planning his computer-controlled machining system, Ten years had to pass, with the intervening development and gradual proliferation of @ NC machine tools, © ‘ransistorized computers, © high-level programming languages, © operating systems, © computer graphics and @ automatic computer-based NC programming [6] before the next phase - that of the almost real-world day-dream — could ensure. This was the formulation in 1961 by Eugene Merchant of “the ‘manufacturing system concept” [7]. This concept envisaged a system “made up of the elements of design, programming, control system, machine and, fabrication processes”, with the aim of “automa- tion of this entire manufacturing process from Computers in Industry initial design to finished product, so that it will not only have versatility and be free from the limnita- tions of mass production methods, but that it will also free men from routine activity, providing in its place work which makes greater use of their creative abilities”. It was formulated in the en- vironment of a company (Cincinnati Milacron) that was already routinely manufacturing ten different types of numerically controlled machines, in a country which by this time had a dynamically expanding computer industry. Nevertheless, in 1961 Merchant's concept was still a dream or ~ as, he more prosaically put it ~ @ framework for coor- dinated, long-term research. The discrepancy with regard to “reality” was diminishing, And in the course of the next decade, reality slowly ~ pain- fully, at times murderously slowly ~ began to catch, up with the dream. For many, this was to be a nightmare phase, 2. Nightmares “Not tl after long. spell-bound sleep under the nightmare, Un Carlyle: Sartor Resartus, 1858. ars dd the beeing heart. sink ino But Reaion ‘The 1960-s witnessed the first successful instal lations of groups of numerically controlled mac- hhines, linked by automatic work-piece transfer arrangements and operating under the overall con- trol of @ digital computer. The computer-con- tolled manufacturing system concept was gradu ally materializing in real-life, industrial environ ‘ments. Yet this transition from dreams to reality proved in most cases to be a painful and long process, haunted for many years by recursing chimeras. It was a process in which compunies, systems, concepts and their authors fell by the wayside. It was a rude awakening, whose lessons we tried to learn in the 1970-s and think we my mostly have mastered by the 1980-5. ‘The thought process of a fundamental reconsid eration of the entire machining process, hegii bs D.TN. Williamson FRS in 1951, resulted by 1 in the elaboration of a detailed project, for ‘manufacturing system of an entirely new (ype |S] The new system was based on @ new materials @ new machine tools, comprisingComputers in Industry ‘s+ anew geometry ‘se new drives ‘e+ new slideways ‘s= new champing systen @ new numerical controls © new workpiece and tool transport equipment © new computer hardware © new computer software, comprising ‘e+ anew scheduling system ‘s+ a new operating system ‘se a new part programming language ‘e+ new communications software © a new building @ new swarth removal arrangements ete. This project differed substantially from the sub- sequent ones not only in the positive sense that its radical departures from traditional limitations were 4 source of stimulation to the pioneering genera- tion of manufacturing systems designers in many countries (and continue to this day, to influence ‘our thinking), but also ~ unfortunately ~ in the negative fact that this was the first and only pro- ject of its kind, to be branded as a fiasco. The project was, in fact, abandoned unfinished and subsequent efforts in Britain and the United States partially to resuscitate it, also proved unsuccessful, ‘Simplistic reasoning ~ particularly the failure of the British Government and of the Company to put up more money ~ has been advanced for the act that this most grandiose and detailed dream turned into a spectacular nightmare, My own view, however, it that this process was in its essential aspects © inevitable, and © non-unique. ‘The inevitability of the failure of the SYSTEM 24 (visible, of course, only in retrospect, from a distance of many years), lay in two “laws” which we have since come to recognize. These state: 1, Systems can only be built from extant and reliable component modules. Any contraven- tion of this law involves exorbitant penalties in terms of time, money and highly skilled effort. A system can ~ in general ’ ~ be no more relia~ ble than the least reliable of its component modules. "ths refeos to systems preceding the introduction of artificial intelligence techniques J, Harsany / Dreams, Nighmarer and Realiy 101 In terms of these laws, the SYSTEM 24 venture, where almost everything was simultaneously new and untested, was from the outset doomed to the hhuge overruns of deadlines and resources and the frustrating dead-ends encountered in seemingly unimportant details, which were to cost it its life My second thesis states that the SYSTEM 24 “fiasco” was unique only in its spectacularness. In fact, a number of other systems were also con- ceived and built in the late sixties in the United States, Japan and the GDR [9], to be commis- sioned (and celebrated) between 1968 and 1971 Necessarily, these systems too, had to incorporate in their design a host of functions and modules which were not commercially available, not ade~ quately tested and not reliable enough to secure the viability of the overall systems. Admittedly, there were fewer such modules in these less radi cally revolutionary systems than in the SYSTEM 24, but nevertheless there were quite enough, for each of these pioneering ventures 100, to incur the hhuge overdrafts in time and money and human resources that ensued. The difference was, that in these prestige projects the penalties were covered fon a “cost-what-it-may” basis, the systems were spectacularly commissioned (instead of spectacu- larly abandoned), although subsequently each of them proved economically and technically unvia- ble and was either dismantled, or operated consid- erably below the initial functional specifications. The nightmare character of these projects was ~ certainly to those actually involved in com. missioning and operating them — at least as ap- parent as in the case where this was exposed to the public gaze. ‘We have all of us, who have traversed in our various countries the pioneer's path between the dream and the reality of computer-controlled manufacturing systems, had to pass over this twilight, nightmare bridge [10,11,12,13]. There was no other way of learning how to build large and complex, multi-diseiplinary systems, and the mod- ules for a rational synthesis were in any case not available, Some sank into unbelief. Others tried to create all the necessary conditions for the dis crepancies between dream and reality to be broken down,12 State-of-the-art 3. Reality “Realism: Practice of regarding things in their true nature and dating wth them as they are Oxford English Dictionary A. recent world survey of computer-aided manufacturing, sponsored by the US National Academy of Sciences [9], came to the following conclusion: “A new, highly dynamic period of CAM has begun in all the industrialized countries of the world. By the turn of this century, the extent to which CAM principles are applied will be the determining factor of the status of a nation’s, industries.” The beginning of the rapid proliferation of CAM systems during the last five years has at last brought to very visible fruition a long process of seemingly slow development. This remarkable change in the rate of installation is all the more noteworthy, @ it has occurred in a period of grave economic @ it has nevertheless extended the market for manufacturing systems to the medium and small ‘companies [14] ‘The basic factors which have at last in the eighties, rendered computer-based manufacturing systems technically and economically viable, marketable products, have been the following: 1. Mature, well-designed, precise, fast, robust, highly reliable NC machine-tools which have evolved through a succession of generations and can be depended upon to be cost-effective members of a system, 2. Mature, highly reliable, low-cost, rugged elec- tronic comrols which can be easily adapted through software to fit into a variety of systems situations. 3. Computers in broad performance and price range, fully equipped with the operating sys- tems, utilities, compilers, file and data-base ‘management systems, interfaces, etc. necessary for any of the planning, programming, schedul- ing, control, diagnostic and communications tasks arising in manufacturing systems 4, Man-machine interfaces for the shop floor, the engineer and the supervisor, that are congenial, ergonomic and reliable. 5. A wide range of mature, rugged, reliable equip- ment for workpiece and tool transport, ranging Computers in Indy from pallet trucks to robots and freely prov grammable robot vehicles. ‘These system components ~ each of them born of many years’ gestation — are, however, only the sine qua non of “nighimareless”, real-life system building on an industrial and commercial (as op- posed to an experimental and subsidized) basis. In themselves they would have made CAM viable, but not necessarily attractive. To achieve the latter property, two more factors must be added to the list, both the results of the new property of distib- sued informotion processing power, rendered possi ble by the microprocessor revolution. They are 6. The new possibility of the piecewise synthesis of larger_ manufacturing. systems from indepen- dently operable sub-systems (machining cells) This has become feasible, because top-down functional systems design techniques have ad- vanced far enough, to enable large systems to be accurately predesigned in such a way, that the subsystems are subsequently easily and effi ciently linked. ‘The result is that investments can be made in smaller quanta, with shorter returns, fewer resources tied down in commise sioning and opportunities for more graudal so- cial and organizational changes. The vastly increased resilience of the new sys- tems, ie. their ability to withstand almost catastrophic situations. Welldesigned systems with adequate distributed processing power and flexibly programmable transport arrangements can be reconfigured and reprogrammed with rel ative ease, to circumvent breakdowns in. any part ofthe larger systems and to minimize their consequences ‘The question may then be posed: have computer based manufacturing systems, emerging from their Jong dream phase, having passed through the nightmare one, become today a problem-free arcs of industrial activity? The answer is quite obvi ously in the negative, by reason of the © social (15) © educational © organizational @ managerial (16) © poptlation settlement (17) and other problems that they pose, but als be cause of the new dreams that are tay hein dreamt by those who work for the future. The new dreams are centered round the follow ing subjects:Computers in Industry 1. Intelligent manufacturing systems [18]. Systems that utilize the results of artificial intelligence research automatically to recognize situations, to devise and implement strategies for these situations and to enhance their own knowledge-bases through experience with situa- tions about which no detailed, explicit human knowledge is available to them, . Advanced data-base management technologies, that will enable distributed systems to be built with an ability at the same time to integrate data management over the total system. These technologies should enable a single, holistic data-flow to be developed over the whole prod- uct life-cycle, while at the same time powerfully decentralising the actual data handling to the Jocal subsystems. 3. High level programming, using the new (and still to be developed) systems programming lan: guages to make programming increasingly transparent, manageable, predictable and cost- effective 4. Open systems architectures, enabling subsystems and systems of differing structures and com: position to communicate with one another in an implicit fashion, without the need for special imterfacing and communications skills to be applied by each implementor and each user. 5. Computer graphics as a ubiquitous man-mac- hine interface at all levels of man-machine com- munication, contributing also to the solution of many of today's psychological and ergonomic problems (19 6. Metamorphic machine tools which themselves change their own morphological configuration to fulfill a succession of machining, measuring and other manufacturing functions on a workpiece. 7. New machining technologies, including the use of lasers for cutting, measuring and surface treatment, water-jet, plasma, electron-beam and other techniques. 8. Fully automatic assembly using sensor-equipped intelligent robots. All of these topics are in either the dream or the nightmare stage, ie. they are still only scientists’ laboratory ideas, or they are currently experienc: ing their first implementational fiascos (more pret- tily: teething troubles). When they have become a part of our industrial realities, there will be new dreams, J. Hatoony / Drowns, Nghmares and Reality 113 4. Conclusions Innovation is a pleasurable, satisfying, arduous, prickly, sometimes suicidal, but always exciting and adventurous activity (somewhat like love.) It always begins with a period of euphoria, almost always followed by one of disappointment and disillusionment, finally ~ if successful - to pro- ceed to tranquil prosperity, where the cycle begins again. Applied to the sphere of computer-aided manufacturing systems, we have observed this cycle to take place aver a period of about 25-30 years. ‘Two further conclusions, however, also suggest themselves. One is that the period of the cycle is shortening. The other, that the “nightmare” phase, the first, failure-prone implementations, can with the forethought and the techniques now available to us from past experience, be increasingly avoided or reduced in its consequences. In order 10 achieve these two effects, the dreamer-designer of today must @ learn from the experiences of the past, but @ use the design and development techniques of the future, References 10) 8. Freud, Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur Einfoheung in die" Peychoanalyse- (Internationsler Psychoanaliischer Vertes, Wien, 1922). [2] DB. Kicin, Dreams, in Encyclopaedia Britannica ‘yclopacdis Britannica, London, 1968), (3). Diebold, Automation, the Advent of the Automatic Feciory (D. van Nostrand, New York, 1952), (4) J. Diebold etal, Making the Automatic Faciory a Reality (Harvard University, 1952), [5] LC. MeDonough and A.W. Susskind, A Numerically Con twolled Millag Machine Joint ALEE-IRE-ACM Computer Conference (New York, 1952) [6] DIT. Ross etal. Automatic Programming of Numer Controlled Machine Tools. MIT Interim Reports 6873-1R 1 to 11 and Final Report 6873 FR-3 (MIT, Cambridge, Mass, 1956-1959 and 1960). [0] MEE. Merchant, The Manufacturing System Concept in Production Engineering Research, CIRP Annalen, 2 (1961) 83 [8] DTN. Williamson, SYSTEM 24 A new Concept of Manufacture, Peoe, MTDR, 1967 (Pergamon, Oxford 1968), [91 J. Hatvany, Merchant, M.B. Rathmil, K, and Yoshikawa, H,, World Survey of CAM (Butterworth, Guilford, 1983) 120) 4. Harvany, Edelény, Land Lad L., Program Control of Machine Tools with Fast Magnetic Memory, Hungarian Patent No, 148080 (1959), (En114 State-of-the-Art [11] Hatvany, 1, Some New Trends in Manufacturing Autom tion (ln Hungarian) Proe. IL. Automatislisi Kollokvium (MIA, Budapest, 196). (12) Hatvany, J, and Nemes, L., Hardware Software Trade-Ofts in the Computer Contzal of Groups of Machine Tools. Preprint of the IFAC Sth World Congress. (ISA, Pitt ‘| bureh, 1972). [23] Hatvany, J Computer Control of Manufacturing Systems {ln Hungarian), Mérts fe Automatika, 2 (1974) 1-7. [n4) —. The Computer: The Tool for Today, American Mac hii, Fume (1982) 129-116, [15] Briefs, U, Work Without Sense and Perspective? (In Ger san) (Paul-Rugenstein, Kel, 1980). Computers [16] Gold, B., Improving Managerial Evaluations of Compoter-Aided Manvfacturiag. (National Academy Press, Washington, 198). [D7] Hatvany, J, Bjorke, O,, Merchant, M.E. Semenkov, O1 and Yoshikawa, H., Advanced Manufscturing Systems in Modern Society, in: Semenkov, OL. and Elis, TMR (84s) Proc. of PROLAMAT 82 (North-Holland, Amst am, 1983), 18) Hatvany, J, and Nemers, L, Intelligent Manufacturing Systems ~a Tentative Forecast, Pros. IFAC Tth World Congress (Pergarion, Oxford, 1978. [n9) Sata, T. and Warman, E, (Eds) Man-Machine Communi cation in CAD/CAM (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1981.