About
Us
What Do We Mean When We Say "Automation
Systems?"
Automation
Systems Today
Today, there are several levels of automation
out there. Although it has received definition by
many, its
attributes and aspects continue to change. For the
time being, however, for the sake of defining what
we mean in automation systems, we shall attempt
to plagarize those before us who have pioneered
us to this point.
There
was a time when the competitive struggles for industrial
survival took place within a country's borders.
Worldwide barriers to transportation, communication,
and trade provided a measure of insulation between
a country's industries and their foreign competitors.
Even more important was the financial and technological
advantage possessed by a privileged few industrialized
nations that seem impregnable to the leaders of
industries of less developed nations. But the luxuries
wrought for the rich nations by these competitive
barriers have become their weaknesses - the chinks
in the armor that formerly protected them from industrial
competition. High wage rates, inefficient management,
and obsolete factories are among these luxuries,
which have allowed hungrier competition to break
down the barriers and seize markets using low wages,
determined management, and new factories that employ
some of the latest technology developed by the very
countries that are under economic seige.
The
United States of America has seen its position as
world manufacturing leader under serious question
in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. Some have
seen robotics as a possible savior to reverse the
trend. Others have despaired that even robotics
will not impede what they consider to be the inevitable
demise of the industrial colossus that has been
the United States. However, toward the end of the
decade of the 1980s, some rays of hope began to
shine through.
Despite
intense wage rate competition and the commitment
to quality of such industrialized countries as Japan,
the United States has a tremendous advantage over
other countries in manufacturing. This advantage
is the presence of a very large and ready domestic
market for its products. Canada possesses nearly
the same advantage as the United States because
of its own market and proximity and excellent relationship
with the large market of its neighbor to the south.
Europe is seeking a similar advantage of its own
by creating the European Common Market. The combined
economies of the countries of Europe make up a large
and powerful market base on which to build volume
production with the associated economies of scale
that U.S. industries have enjoyed.
For
those industries that qualify, automation offers
opportunities for quantum advances in productivity
efficiency. - the kind of advances necessary to
reverse trends, recapture markets, and break free
from old constrictive ways. Automation is certainly
not new, and in a broad sense it can be traced back
to the Industrial Revolution when machines first
began to multiply vastly the productive capability
of workers. The history of automation, however,
has not been characterized by a steady progression;
instead, it has been a series of breakthroughs.
One breakthrough was interchangeable manufacture;
another was Henry Ford's assembly lines. One that
is currently upon us a combination of robots, mechanized
automation, integrated enterprise systems and business
process engineering combined in various ways to
yield above average results.
Regarding
robots, they themselves are not the breakthrough,
but are a product or result of the breakthrough.
Robots have become the standard bearers of the current
industrial automation movement and deserve the attention
of any automation engineer who is involved in discrete-item
manufacturing. The enterprise systems that have
been developed in the automation of manufacturing
facilities has now spilled out into many industies.
An example of this is SAP.
SAP
originated in manufacturing in order to assist in
automating and expediting processes. The leap of
R/2 (mainframe and funtional oriented) to R/3 (client-server
and business process oriented) allowed tremendous
progress in expanding this manufacturing "automation
tool" to have a broader application to overall industries.
This has resulted in an explosion in SAP R/3 enterprise
systems and some of its lesser competitors (Baan,
etc.) to become the standard bearers for automation
of businesses in ways not before contemplated, especially
in a fully integrated way. On top of all of this,
was the requirement to "reengineer" the workplace
through business process engineering. This is a
requirement in order to implement any enterprise
system (using client-servers that needs business
processes clearly defined and modeled in order to
operate successfully and produce the expected results).
Labor's
Role in Automation
Automation certainly is not the only
way to break out of constricting environments. When
the chips are down, the response of labor has been
remarkable. Demands for higher wages formerly seemed
almost insatiable. In the United States, the labor
leaders of the 1960s would have been incredulous
had they been afforded a glimpse of the wage and
benefits concessions made by labor unions in the
1980s.
In
recent years it has sometimes appeared that labor
has more determination to meet world competition
than does management. In the 1980s and early 1990s
large U.S. companies have become bankrupt or suffered
severe cutbacks in operations or corporate mission.
These cutbacks have resulted in numerous plant closings,
sometimes accompanied by severe hardship, especially
in small towns in which the plant was the major
employer. So determined are labor and local management
in these crises, that, in some cases, employee groups
have mounted drives to buy the facility from the
parent company and continue operations.
Another
weapon that is being used as a competitive weapon
is participative management. The first arena for
the display of this weapon was product quality,
and the most popular term describing participative
management is still "quality circles."
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