Page 609 - Sensors and Control Systems in Manufacturing

562
Cha p te r
Ele v e n

Fully automated
system,
including control
Expert systems, data
bases and sensors
-no programming
Advanced sensors
-little programming

Sensors added
to reduce
programming
Trend in manning
level and batch
FMS with some size
unmanned operation
DNC systems

FIGURE 11.11 The role of sensors in moving manufacturing technology forward to
the year 2020.

took place far more slowly, and the rate of change is bound to cause
considerable problems to politicians and industrialists alike. With the
prospect of 22,000,000 jobs being lost in the United States, 14,000,000
in Japan, 9,000,000 each in France and Italy, and 5,500,000 in the
United Kingdom over a ten-year period, people are bound to be
alarmed. Figure 11.11 shows the expected relationship between man-
ufacturing technology advances and manufacturing employment.
In this period, though, many new products and systems will go
into production, and, in theory, with the reduction in prices that the
increased productivity will bring, demand worldwide should
increase. Equally, it is clear that the development and maintenance of
all this software will provide a large number of skilled jobs. In fact,
there is likely to be a shortage of skills in many areas, which will have
the effect of retarding development of new systems.
Clearly, the nations that train people in the relevant skills will have
a head start. In any case, the changes in the number of employees are
based on the assumption that each nation maintains its current share
of the market for manufactured goods. In practice, this is unlikely,
since some countries are more competitive than others, while the
newly industrialized nations will also take some of that business.
Although it is imperative that people be educated in the right
skills, this is not enough. The whole way in which people are edu-
cated and how they think of work must be changed. The introduction
of computer-integrated manufacturing strategies and computerized
sensors and control systems in manufacturing, transport, and perhaps