Manufacturing

Synonyms

Fabrication; Production

Definition

The entirety of interrelated economic, technological, and organizational measures directly connected with the processing/machining of materials, i.e., all functions and activities directly contributing to the making of goods.

Note: “Manufacturing” is often used synonymously for “production.” However, its conceptual content is larger than that of “production,” since it also encompasses managerial functions. Manufacturing is part of the supply chain between suppliers and customers of a manufacturing company. It includes the value adding processes, namely, fabrication and assembly, as well as the organizational functions, namely, process planning and production planning and control. Fabrication and assembly together are called production (CIRP Dictionary of Production Engineering 2004).

Theory and Application

History

The history of manufacturing begins with the world itself. The term “manufacture” is derived from two Latin words manu (by hand) and facere (make); the combination means “to make by hand” (Kalpakjian and Schmid 2002). Manufacturing began around 5,000–4,000 BC with the fabrication of various articles of wood, ceramics, stone, and metal. From ancient times until the eighteenth century, industry was practiced first within the family, based on slaves work (e.g., Greece, Rome) or as temple activities (e.g., Egypt) and later also as organized commercial enterprises of limited production capacity. In the East, industry prospered in the field of fabrics, dyeing, and jewellery; whereas in the West, industry started at the time of the Carolingians with the birth of the most powerful industries: iron and steel (first blast furnaces), weaving, papermaking, etc. In the seventeenth century, the consolidation of national monarchies and the consequent formation of larger nationwide markets, the development of transports and banks, yielded favorable conditions to the development of industry. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the First Industrial Revolution (1760–1830) marked the change from an economy based on agriculture and handicraft to one based on industry and manufacturing. The change began in England, where a series of machines were invented and steam power replaced water, wind, and animal power. However, the revolution eventually spread to other European countries and to North America. While England was leading the industrial revolution, an important concept was being introduced by Eli Whitney (1765–1825) in the United States: interchangeable parts manufacture. This would become a prerequisite for mass production. The mid- and late 1800s witnessed the expansion of railroads, steam-powered ships, and other machines that created a growing need for iron and steel. New steel production methods were developed to meet this demand. Also during this period, several consumer products were developed, including the sewing machine, bicycle, and automobile. In order to meet the mass demand for these products, more efficient production methods were required. Some historians identify developments during this period as the Second Industrial Revolution, characterized in terms of its effects on manufacturing systems by the following: (1) mass production, (2) scientific management movement, (3) assembly lines, and (4) electrification of factories.

Henry Ford (1863–1947) introduced the assembly line in 1913 at his Highland Park plant. The assembly line made possible the mass production of complex consumer products. In 1881, the first electric power-generating station was built in New York City, and soon electric motors were being used as a power source to operate factory machinery. This was a far more convenient power delivery system than steam engines, which required overhead belts to distribute power to the machines. By 1920, electricity had overtaken steam as the principal power source in the factories of the twentieth century, a time of more technological advances than in all other centuries combined (Groover 2007). From the mid-1950s up to the introduction of the first personal computer in 1981, manufacturing started turning digital, thus marking the initiation of the Third Industrial Revolution. Mechanical and electronic technologies changed to digital with the wide adoption in manufacturing of computers and information and communication technology (ICT), leading to the introduction of automated machines, systems, and processes in manufacturing (e.g., computer numerical control (CNC), computer-aided process planning (CAPP), just in-time production (JIT), cellular manufacturing, flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), etc.).

To date, manufacturing covers approximately 21 % of the EU’s GDP providing more than 30 million jobs in 230.000 enterprises and is facing an intense and growing competitive pressure in global markets. The guidelines for the revitalization of the manufacturing industry pass through innovation of production processes and systems towards more efficient and smart solutions in terms of costs, quality of work, and increased competitiveness through research and development in the technological know-how. By the end of the twentieth century, industries have invested in the relocation of resources to increase competitiveness and reduce costs. Today, Europe has become aware of the importance of innovation in industrial production setting the goal to achieve, by 2020, 20 % of the GDP’s manufacturing. This means investing heavily in the review of manufacturing processes and systems and therefore in automation.

In this framework, an ongoing paradigm shift in manufacturing points toward global production networks adopting new computing and Internet-based technologies as key enabling technologies to meet new challenges. This represents the Fourth Industrial Revolution that someone has recently called “Industry 4.0,” leading to the flexible usage of diverse globally distributed, scalable, and service-oriented manufacturing resources.

To realize the full-scale sharing, free circulation, and transaction as well as on-demand use of manufacturing resources and capabilities in advanced production industries, cloud manufacturing (CMfg) has been proposed as a new service-oriented manufacturing approach. CMfg can be defined as an integrated cyber-physical system (CPS) that can provide on-demand manufacturing services digitally and physically for optimal resource utilization. It has been conceived as an extension of the cloud computing (CC) paradigm to the manufacturing sector. Compared with CC, the services managed in CMfg include not only computational and software tools but also various digital and physical manufacturing resources that different users in an industrial environment can remotely access on a shared basis (Gao et al. 2015).

The timeline of the four successive industrial revolutions is reported in Fig. 1.

Manufacturing, Fig. 1

Timeline of the four successive industrial revolutions

Manufacturing Activities

Manufacturing can be defined as the application of physical and chemical processes to modify the properties of a given start material in terms of its form, shape, size, mechanical characteristics, external appearance, etc., in order to fabricate a single part representing a product or multiple parts to be assembled to form a complex product. In order to perform a manufacturing process, it is necessary to utilize appropriated machines, tools, fixtures, energy, and manpower (Fig. 2).

Manufacturing, Fig. 2

Definition of manufacturing as a technological process

Manufacturing is generally a complex activity involving people who have a broad range of disciplines and skills, together with a wide variety of machinery, equipment, and tools with various levels of automation, including computers, robots, and material-handling equipment.

Manufacturing activities must be responsive to several demands and trends:

• 1. A product must fully meet design requirements and specifications and standards.

• 2. A product must be manufactured by the most economical and environmental friendly methods.

• 3. Quality must be built into product at each stage, from design to assembly, rather than relying on quality testing after the product is made.

• 4. In a highly competitive environment, production methods must be sufficiently flexible to respond to changing market demands, types of products, production rates, production quantities, and to provide on-time delivery to the customer.

• 5. New developments in materials, production methods, and computer integration of both technological and managerial activities in a manufacturing organization must constantly be evaluated with respect to their timely and economic implementation.

• 6. Manufacturing activities must be viewed as a large system in which all individual components are interrelated. Such systems can now be modeled in order to study the effects of various factors, such as changes in market demands, product design, costs, and production methods, on product quality and costs.

• 7. The manufacturer must work with the customer to get timely feedback for continuous product improvement.

• 8. The manufacturing organization must constantly strive for higher productivity, defined as the optimum use of all its resources: materials, machines, energy, capital, labor, and technology. Output per employee per hour in all phases must be maximized.

Innovative Manufacturing Applications

Over the last 5 years (2010–15), the main addressed manufacturing issues have been:

• Manufacturing systems design, modeling, simulation and optimization

• Production planning, scheduling, and control

• Intelligent manufacturing (evolutionary algorithms, multi-agents, genetic algorithms, knowledge management, data mining, decision-making) (Ueda et al. 2009; Tolio et al. 2010)

• Virtual and augmented reality for manufacturing

• Supply chains and production networks (Váncza et al. 2011)

• Reconfigurable, flexible, and changeable manufacturing systems

• Globalization, scalability, and capacity planning (Putnik et al. 2013)

• Complexity manufacturing (ElMaraghy et al. 2012)

• Business models, strategic enterprise planning for change

• Energy and resource efficient manufacturing

• Sustainable and green manufacturing (Ueda et al. 2009)

• Advanced IT for manufacturing (virtual factory, cloud manufacturing, cyber-physical systems, Internet of things, Industry 4.0) (Gao et al. 2015)

• Maintenance strategies

• Process planning and control

• Mass customization and personalization

• Customer driven products/production (Tolio et al. 2010)

• X-to-Order (engineering, design, manufacture, logistics)

• Production quality (Colledani et al. 2014)

• Sensors and sensing techniques for zero defect manufacturing

• Logistics systems

• Inventory management

• Industrial product-service systems

• Additive manufacturing

• Bio-manufacturing

• Nano and micro manufacturing

• Human factors in manufacturing

• Learning factories and manufacturing education

Cross-References

• Assembly

• Assembly Automation

• Assembly Line

• Design Methodology

• Production