Manufacturing Automation

How Manufacturing Automation Is Evolving

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As demand from emerging economies encourages the production of robots to shift to lower-cost regions, they are likely to become cheaper still. People with the skills required to design, install, operate, and maintain robotic production systems are becoming more widely available, too. Robotics engineers were once rare and expensive specialists. Today, these subjects are widely taught in schools and colleges around the world, either in dedicated courses or as part of more general education on manufacturing technologies or engineering design for manufacture.

The availability of software, such as simulation packages and offline programming systems that can test robotic applications, has reduced engineering time and risk. Advances in computing power, software-development techniques, and networking technologies have made assembling, installing, and maintaining robots faster and less costly than before. For example, while sensors and actuators once had to be individually connected to robot controllers with dedicated wiring through terminal racks, connectors, and junction boxes, they now use plug-and-play technologies in which components can be connected using simpler network wiring.

The components will identify themselves automatically to the control system, greatly reducing setup time. These sensors and actuators can also monitor themselves and report their status to the control system, to aid process control and collect data for maintenance, and for continuous improvement and troubleshooting purposes. Other standards and network technologies make it similarly straightforward to link robots to wider production systems. Robots are getting smarter, too.

Where early robots blindly followed the same path, and later iterations used lasers or vision systems to detect the orientation of parts and materials, the latest generations of robots can integrate information from multiple sensors and adapt their movements in real time. This allows them, for example, to use force feedback to mimic the skill of a craftsman in grinding, deburring, or polishing applications. They can also make use of more powerful computer technology and big data—style analysis. For instance, they can use spectral analysis to check the quality of a weld as it is being made, dramatically reducing the amount of postmanufacture inspection required.

Today, these factors are helping to boost robot adoption in the kinds of application they already excel at today: As the cost and complexity of automating tasks with robots goes down, it is likely that the kinds of companies already using robots will use even more of them. In the next five to ten years, however, we expect a more fundamental change in the kinds of tasks for which robots become both technically and economically viable Exhibit 2.

Here are some examples. The inherent flexibility of a device that can be programmed quickly and easily will greatly reduce the number of times a robot needs to repeat a given task to justify the cost of buying and commissioning it. This will lower the threshold of volume and make robots an economical choice for niche tasks, where annual volumes are measured in the tens or hundreds rather than in the thousands or hundreds of thousands.

It will also make them viable for companies working with small batch sizes and significant product variety. The cost savings offered by this kind of low-volume automation will benefit many different kinds of organizations: Emerging technologies are likely to simplify robot programming even further. While it is already common to teach robots by leading them through a series of movements, for example, rapidly improving voice-recognition technology means it may soon be possible to give them verbal instructions, too.

Advances in artificial intelligence and sensor technologies will allow robots to cope with a far greater degree of task-to-task variability. The ability to adapt their actions in response to changes in their environment will create opportunities for automation in areas such as the processing of agricultural products, where there is significant part-to-part variability. In Japan, trials have already demonstrated that robots can cut the time required to harvest strawberries by up to 40 percent, using a stereoscopic imaging system to identify the location of fruit and evaluate its ripeness.

These same capabilities will also drive quality improvements in all sectors. Robots will be able to compensate for potential quality issues during manufacturing. Examples here include altering the force used to assemble two parts based on the dimensional differences between them, or selecting and combining different sized components to achieve the right final dimensions.

Robot-generated data, and the advanced analysis techniques to make better use of them, will also be useful in understanding the underlying drivers of quality. If higher-than-normal torque requirements during assembly turn out to be associated with premature product failures in the field, for example, manufacturing processes can be adapted to detect and fix such issues during production. Future generations are likely to offer even higher levels of precision.

Such capabilities will allow them to participate in increasingly delicate tasks, such as threading needles or assembling highly sophisticated electronic devices. Robots are also becoming better coordinated, with the availability of controllers that can simultaneously drive dozens of axes, allowing multiple robots to work together on the same task.

Finally, advanced sensor technologies, and the computer power needed to analyze the data from those sensors, will allow robots to take on tasks like cutting gemstones that previously required highly skilled craftspeople. The same technologies may even permit activities that cannot be done at all today: Companies will also have far more freedom to decide which tasks to automate with robots and which to conduct manually. Advanced safety systems mean robots can take up new positions next to their human colleagues. If sensors indicate the risk of a collision with an operator, the robot will automatically slow down or alter its path to avoid it.

This technology permits the use of robots for individual tasks on otherwise manual assembly lines.

And the removal of safety fences and interlocks mean lower costs—a boon for smaller companies. The ability to put robots and people side by side and to reallocate tasks between them also helps productivity, since it allows companies to rebalance production lines as demand fluctuates. Robots that can operate safely in proximity to people will also pave the way for applications away from the tightly controlled environment of the factory floor. Internet retailers and logistics companies are already adopting forms of robotic automation in their warehouses.

Imagine the productivity benefits available to a parcel courier, though, if an onboard robot could presort packages in the delivery vehicle between drops. Automation systems are becoming increasingly flexible and intelligent, adapting their behavior automatically to maximize output or minimize cost per unit. Expert systems used in beverage filling and packing lines can automatically adjust the speed of the whole production line to suit whichever activity is the critical constraint for a given batch. In automotive production, expert systems can automatically make tiny adjustments in line speed to improve the overall balance of individual lines and maximize the effectiveness of the whole manufacturing system.

While the vast majority of robots in use today still operate in high-speed, high-volume production applications, the most advanced systems can make adjustments on the fly, switching seamlessly between product types without the need to stop the line to change programs or reconfigure tooling.

Many current and emerging production technologies, from computerized-numerical-control CNC cutting to 3-D printing, allow component geometry to be adjusted without any need for tool changes, making it possible to produce in batch sizes of one. An elevator control system is an example of sequence control. A proportional—integral—derivative controller PID controller is a control loop feedback mechanism controller widely used in industrial control systems.

The theoretical understanding and application dates from the s, and they are implemented in nearly all analogue control systems; originally in mechanical controllers, and then using discrete electronics and latterly in industrial process computers. Sequential control may be either to a fixed sequence or to a logical one that will perform different actions depending on various system states. An example of an adjustable but otherwise fixed sequence is a timer on a lawn sprinkler.

States refer to the various conditions that can occur in a use or sequence scenario of the system. An example is an elevator, which uses logic based on the system state to perform certain actions in response to its state and operator input. For example, if the operator presses the floor n button, the system will respond depending on whether the elevator is stopped or moving, going up or down, or if the door is open or closed, and other conditions.

An early development of sequential control was relay logic , by which electrical relays engage electrical contacts which either start or interrupt power to a device. Relays were first used in telegraph networks before being developed for controlling other devices, such as when starting and stopping industrial-sized electric motors or opening and closing solenoid valves. Using relays for control purposes allowed event-driven control, where actions could be triggered out of sequence, in response to external events.

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These were more flexible in their response than the rigid single-sequence cam timers. More complicated examples involved maintaining safe sequences for devices such as swing bridge controls, where a lock bolt needed to be disengaged before the bridge could be moved, and the lock bolt could not be released until the safety gates had already been closed. The total number of relays, cam timers and drum sequencers can number into the hundreds or even thousands in some factories. Early programming techniques and languages were needed to make such systems manageable, one of the first being ladder logic , where diagrams of the interconnected relays resembled the rungs of a ladder.

Special computers called programmable logic controllers were later designed to replace these collections of hardware with a single, more easily re-programmed unit. In a typical hard wired motor start and stop circuit called a control circuit a motor is started by pushing a "Start" or "Run" button that activates a pair of electrical relays. The "lock-in" relay locks in contacts that keep the control circuit energized when the push button is released.

The start button is a normally open contact and the stop button is normally closed contact. Another relay energizes a switch that powers the device that throws the motor starter switch three sets of contacts for three phase industrial power in the main power circuit. Large motors use high voltage and experience high in-rush current, making speed important in making and breaking contact. This can be dangerous for personnel and property with manual switches.

The "lock in" contacts in the start circuit and the main power contacts for the motor are held engaged by their respective electromagnets until a "stop" or "off" button is pressed, which de-energizes the lock in relay. Commonly interlocks are added to a control circuit. Suppose that the motor in the example is powering machinery that has a critical need for lubrication. In this case an interlock could be added to insure that the oil pump is running before the motor starts.

Timers, limit switches and electric eyes are other common elements in control circuits. Solenoid valves are widely used on compressed air or hydraulic fluid for powering actuators on mechanical components. While motors are used to supply continuous rotary motion, actuators are typically a better choice for intermittently creating a limited range of movement for a mechanical component, such as moving various mechanical arms, opening or closing valves, raising heavy press rolls, applying pressure to presses.

Computers can perform both sequential control and feedback control, and typically a single computer will do both in an industrial application. Programmable logic controllers PLCs are a type of special purpose microprocessor that replaced many hardware components such as timers and drum sequencers used in relay logic type systems. General purpose process control computers have increasingly replaced stand alone controllers, with a single computer able to perform the operations of hundreds of controllers. Process control computers can process data from a network of PLCs, instruments and controllers in order to implement typical such as PID control of many individual variables or, in some cases, to implement complex control algorithms using multiple inputs and mathematical manipulations.

They can also analyze data and create real time graphical displays for operators and run reports for operators, engineers and management. Control of an automated teller machine ATM is an example of an interactive process in which a computer will perform a logic derived response to a user selection based on information retrieved from a networked database.

The ATM process has similarities with other online transaction processes. The different logical responses are called scenarios. Such processes are typically designed with the aid of use cases and flowcharts , which guide the writing of the software code. The earliest feedback control mechanism was the water clock invented by Greek engineer Ctesibius — BC. It was a preoccupation of the Greeks and Arabs in the period between about BC and about AD to keep accurate track of time. In Ptolemaic Egypt , about BC, Ctesibius described a float regulator for a water clock , a device not unlike the ball and cock in a modern flush toilet.

This was the earliest feedback controlled mechanism. The introduction of prime movers , or self-driven machines advanced grain mills, furnaces, boilers, and the steam engine created a new requirement for automatic control systems including temperature regulators invented in see Cornelius Drebbel , pressure regulators , float regulators and speed control devices. Another control mechanism was used to tent the sails of windmills. It was patented by Edmund Lee in The design of feedback control systems up through the Industrial Revolution was by trial-and-error, together with a great deal of engineering intuition.

Thus, it was more of an art than a science. In the midth century mathematics was first used to analyze the stability of feedback control systems.

Since mathematics is the formal language of automatic control theory, we could call the period before this time the prehistory of control theory. In Richard Arkwright invented the first fully automated spinning mill driven by water power, known at the time as the water frame. The centrifugal governor , which was invented by Christian Huygens in the seventeenth century, was used to adjust the gap between millstones.

Bunce of England in as part of a model steam crane. The governor could not actually hold a set speed; the engine would assume a new constant speed in response to load changes. The governor was able to handle smaller variations such as those caused by fluctuating heat load to the boiler. Also, there was a tendency for oscillation whenever there was a speed change.

As a consequence, engines equipped with this governor were not suitable for operations requiring constant speed, such as cotton spinning. Several improvements to the governor, plus improvements to valve cut-off timing on the steam engine, made the engine suitable for most industrial uses before the end of the 19th century. Advances in the steam engine stayed well ahead of science, both thermodynamics and control theory. The governor received relatively little scientific attention until James Clerk Maxwell published a paper that established the beginning of a theoretical basis for understanding control theory.

Development of the electronic amplifier during the s, which was important for long distance telephony, required a higher signal to noise ratio, which was solved by negative feedback noise cancellation. This and other telephony applications contributed to control theory. In the s and s, German mathematician Irmgard Flugge-Lotz developed the theory of discontinuous automatic controls, which found military applications during the Second World War to fire control systems and aircraft navigation systems.

Relay logic was introduced with factory electrification , which underwent rapid adaption from though the s. Central electric power stations were also undergoing rapid growth and operation of new high pressure boilers, steam turbines and electrical substations created a large demand for instruments and controls.

Central control rooms became common in the s, but as late as the early s, most process control was on-off. Operators typically monitored charts drawn by recorders that plotted data from instruments. To make corrections, operators manually opened or closed valves or turned switches on or off. Control rooms also used color coded lights to send signals to workers in the plant to manually make certain changes. Controllers, which were able to make calculated changes in response to deviations from a set point rather than on-off control, began being introduced the s.

Controllers allowed manufacturing to continue showing productivity gains to offset the declining influence of factory electrification. Factory productivity was greatly increased by electrification in the s. Alexander Field notes that spending on non-medical instruments increased significantly from —33 and remained strong thereafter.

The First and Second World Wars saw major advancements in the field of mass communication and signal processing. Other key advances in automatic controls include differential equations , stability theory and system theory , frequency domain analysis , ship control , and stochastic analysis In Texaco's Port Arthur refinery became the first chemical plant to use digital control. The automatic telephone switchboard was introduced in along with dial telephones.

Automatic telephone switching originally used vacuum tube amplifiers and electro-mechanical switches, which consumed a large amount of electricity. Call volume eventually grew so fast that it was feared the telephone system would consume all electricity production, prompting Bell Labs to begin research on the transistor.

Automation, robotics, and the factory of the future

The logic performed by telephone switching relays was the inspiration for the digital computer. The first commercially successful glass bottle blowing machine was an automatic model introduced in Sectional electric drives were developed using control theory. Sectional electric drives are used on different sections of a machine where a precise differential must be maintained between the sections. In steel rolling, the metal elongates as it passes through pairs of rollers, which must run at successively faster speeds. In paper making the paper sheet shrinks as it passes around steam heated drying arranged in groups, which must run at successively slower speeds.

The first application of a sectional electric drive was on a paper machine in Before automation many chemicals were made in batches. In , with the widespread use of instruments and the emerging use of controllers, the founder of Dow Chemical Co. Self-acting machine tools that displaced hand dexterity so they could be operated by boys and unskilled laborers were developed by James Nasmyth in the s. This soon evolved into computerized numerical control CNC.

Today extensive automation is practiced in practically every type of manufacturing and assembly process. Some of the larger processes include electrical power generation, oil refining, chemicals, steel mills, plastics, cement plants, fertilizer plants, pulp and paper mills, automobile and truck assembly, aircraft production, glass manufacturing, natural gas separation plants, food and beverage processing, canning and bottling and manufacture of various kinds of parts.

Robots are especially useful in hazardous applications like automobile spray painting. Robots are also used to assemble electronic circuit boards. Automotive welding is done with robots and automatic welders are used in applications like pipelines. With the advent of the space age in , controls design, particularly in the United States, turned away from the frequency-domain techniques of classical control theory and backed into the differential equation techniques of the late 19th century, which were couched in the time domain. During the s and s, German mathematician Irmgard Flugge-Lotz developed the theory of discontinuous automatic control, which became widely used in hysteresis control systems such as navigation systems , fire-control systems , and electronics.

Through Flugge-Lotz and others, the modern era saw time-domain design for nonlinear systems , navigation , optimal control and estimation theory , nonlinear control theory , digital control and filtering theory , and the personal computer Perhaps the most cited advantage of automation in industry is that it is associated with faster production and cheaper labor costs. Another benefit could be that it replaces hard, physical, or monotonous work.

They can also be maintained with simple quality checks. However, at the time being, not all tasks can be automated, and some tasks are more expensive to automate than others. Initial costs of installing the machinery in factory settings are high, and failure to maintain a system could result in the loss of the product itself.

Moreover, some studies seem to indicate that industrial automation could impose ill effects beyond operational concerns, including worker displacement due to systemic loss of employment and compounded environmental damage; however, these findings are both convoluted and controversial in nature, and could potentially be circumvented. Increased automation can often cause workers to feel anxious about losing their jobs as technology renders their skills or experience unnecessary. Early in the Industrial Revolution , when inventions like the steam engine were making some job categories expendable, workers forcefully resisted these changes.

Luddites , for instance, were English textile workers who protested the introduction of weaving machines by destroying them. For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the most influential of these movements were led by organized labor , which advocated for the retraining of workers whose jobs were rendered redundant by machines. Currently, the relative anxiety about automation reflected in opinion polls seems to correlate closely with the strength of organized labor in that region or nation.

Automation is already contributing significantly to unemployment, particularly in nations where the government does not proactively seek to diminish its impact. Lights Out Manufacturing grew in popularity in the U. The expansion of Lights Out Manufacturing requires: The costs of automation to the environment are different depending on the technology, product or engine automated. There are automated engines that consume more energy resources from the Earth in comparison with previous engines and vice versa.

The automation of vehicles could prove to have a substantial impact on the environment, although the nature of this impact could be beneficial or harmful depending on several factors. Because automated vehicles are much less likely to get into accidents compared to human-driven vehicles, some precautions built into current models such as anti-lock brakes or laminated glass would not be required for self-driving versions. Removing these safety features would also significantly reduce the weight of the vehicle, thus increasing fuel economy and reducing emissions per mile.

Self-driving vehicles are also more precise with regard to acceleration and breaking, and this could contribute to reduced emissions. Self-driving cars could also potentially utilize fuel-efficient features such as route mapping that is able to calculate and take the most efficient routes. Despite this potential to reduce emissions, some researchers theorize that an increase of production of self-driving cars could lead to a boom of vehicle ownership and use. This boom could potentially negate any environmental benefits of self-driving cars if a large enough number of people begin driving personal vehicles more frequently.

Automation of homes and home appliances is also thought to impact the environment, but the benefits of these features are also questioned. A study of energy consumption of automated homes in Finland showed that smart homes could reduce energy consumption by monitoring levels of consumption in different areas of the home and adjusting consumption to reduce energy leaks such as automatically reducing consumption during the nighttime when activity is low. However, new research suggests that smart homes might not be as efficient as non-automated homes.

A more recent study has indicated that, while monitoring and adjusting consumption levels does decrease unnecessary energy use, this process requires monitoring systems that also consume a significant amount of energy. This study suggested that the energy required to run these systems is so much so that it negates any benefits of the systems themselves, resulting in little to no ecological benefit. Another major shift in automation is the increased demand for flexibility and convertibility in manufacturing processes. Manufacturers are increasingly demanding the ability to easily switch from manufacturing Product A to manufacturing Product B without having to completely rebuild the production lines.

Flexibility and distributed processes have led to the introduction of Automated Guided Vehicles with Natural Features Navigation. Digital electronics helped too. Former analogue-based instrumentation was replaced by digital equivalents which can be more accurate and flexible, and offer greater scope for more sophisticated configuration, parametrization and operation. This was accompanied by the fieldbus revolution which provided a networked i.

How manufacturing work—and manufacturing workforces—could change

Discrete manufacturing plants adopted these technologies fast. The more conservative process industries with their longer plant life cycles have been slower to adopt and analogue-based measurement and control still dominates. The growing use of Industrial Ethernet on the factory floor is pushing these trends still further, enabling manufacturing plants to be integrated more tightly within the enterprise, via the internet if necessary. Global competition has also increased demand for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems.

Engineers can now have numerical control over automated devices. The result has been a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities. Computer-aided technologies or CAx now serve as the basis for mathematical and organizational tools used to create complex systems. The improved design, analysis, and manufacture of products enabled by CAx has been beneficial for industry. Information technology , together with industrial machinery and processes , can assist in the design, implementation, and monitoring of control systems.

One example of an industrial control system is a programmable logic controller PLC. PLCs are specialized hardened computers which are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from physical sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events. Human-machine interfaces HMI or computer human interfaces CHI , formerly known as man-machine interfaces , are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers.

Service personnel who monitor and control through HMIs can be called by different names. In industrial process and manufacturing environments, they are called operators or something similar. In boiler houses and central utilities departments they are called stationary engineers. When it comes to factory automation, Host Simulation Software HSS is a commonly used testing tool that is used to test the equipment software.

HSS is used to test equipment performance with respect to Factory Automation standards timeouts, response time, processing time. Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond the scope of automation. Human-level pattern recognition , language comprehension , and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities of modern mechanical and computer systems but see Watson computer.

Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than mechanical approaches even where automation of industrial tasks is possible.

Overcoming these obstacles is a theorized path to post-scarcity economics. The paradox of automation says that the more efficient the automated system, the more crucial the human contribution of the operators. Humans are less involved, but their involvement becomes more critical. This is where human operators come in. A fatal example of this was Air France Flight , where a failure of automation put the pilots into a manual situation they were not prepared for.

Cognitive automation, as a subset of artificial intelligence , [61] is an emerging genus of automation enabled by cognitive computing. Its primary concern is the automation of clerical tasks and workflows that consist of structuring unstructured data. Cognitive automation relies on multiple disciplines: The food retail industry has started to apply automation to the ordering process; McDonald's has introduced touch screen ordering and payment systems in many of its restaurants, reducing the need for as many cashier employees.

The use of robots is sometimes employed to replace waiting staff. Many supermarkets and even smaller stores are rapidly introducing Self checkout systems reducing the need for employing checkout workers. In the United States, the retail industry employs Globally, an estimated million workers could be affected by automation according to research by Eurasia Group. Online shopping could be considered a form of automated retail as the payment and checkout are through an automated Online transaction processing system, with the share of online retail accounting jumping from 5.

However, two-thirds of books, music and films are now purchased online. Amazon has gained much of the growth in recent years for online shopping, accounting for half of the growth in online retail in Automated mining involves the removal of human labor from the mining process. Currently it can still require a large amount of human capital , particularly in the third world where labor costs are low so there is less incentive for increasing efficiency through automation. Currently, there is a major effort underway in the vision community to develop a fully automated tracking surveillance system.

Automated video surveillance monitors people and vehicles in real time within a busy environment. Existing automated surveillance systems are based on the environment they are primarily designed to observe, i. The purpose of a surveillance system is to record properties and trajectories of objects in a given area, generate warnings or notify designated authority in case of occurrence of particular events.

As demands for safety and mobility have grown and technological possibilities have multiplied, interest in automation has grown. Congress legislated in ISTEA that "the Secretary of Transportation shall develop an automated highway and vehicle prototype from which future fully automated intelligent vehicle-highway systems can be developed.

Such development shall include research in human factors to ensure the success of the man-machine relationship. The goal of this program is to have the first fully automated highway roadway or an automated test track in operation by

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