外文翻译--现代设计与制造.doc

Modern Design and Manufacturing 1.The Computer and Manufacturing The computer is bringing manufacturing into the Information Age. This new tool, long a familiar one in business and management operations, is moving into the factory, and its advent is changing manufacturing as certainly as the steam engine changed it 100 years ago. The basic metalworking processes are not likely to change fundamentally, but their organization and control definitely will Inone respect, manufacturing could be said to be coming full circle. The fist manufacturing was a cottage industry: the designer was also the manufacturer, conceiving and fabricating products one at a time. Eventually, the concept of the interchangeability of parts was developed, production was separated into specialized functions, and identical parts were produced thousands at a time . Today, although the designer and manufacturer may not become one again, the functions are being drawn close in the movement toward an integrated manufacturing system. It is perhaps ironic that, at a time when the market demands a high degree of product diversification, the necessity for increasing productivity and reducing coats is driving manufacturing toward inegration into a coherent system, a continuous process in which parts do not spent as much as 95% of production time being moved around or waiting to be worked on . The computer is the key to each of these twin requirements. It is the only tool that can provide the quick reflexes, the flexibility and seed, to meet a diversified market. And it is the only tool that enables the detailed analysis and the accessibility of accurate data necessary for the integration of the manufacturing system. It may well be that, in the future, the computer may be essential to a company’s survial. Many of today’s businesses will fade away to be replaced by more-productive combinations. Such more-productive combinations are superquality, superproductivity plants. The goal is to design and operate a