1、中英文资料Manufacturing Technology1.Corporate Reorganization Frenzy Because of the intense competitive pressure they experienced during the 1980s, American companies began implementing a wide range of initiatives in order to improve profitability, stem the loss of market share in established markets. The
2、se initiatives included statistical process control, just-in-time logistics, flexible manufacturing, cross-functional teaming, concurrent engineering, enterprise integration, flattened management, reinvesting the company, reengineering, quality function development, manufacturing resource planning,
3、and so on.In addition to obvious cost-cutting measuresreducing the blue-and the white-collar work force, pressuring suppliers for lower prices, reducing the rate of wage increases, and installing new technologies to improve the efficiency of operationscompanies have introduced a number of programs t
4、hat are altering traditional managerial relationships.Three kinds of initiative are of particular importance for pushing companies toward agile business capabilities: Distributing decision-making authority, often called employment Enterprise integration Concurrent operations Distributing decision-ma
5、king authority to operational personnel, flattening the managerial hierarchy, creating an open internal information environment, increasing investing in continuous education and training for all personnel, and making customer service and sales everyones responsibility are correlated initiatives. Com
6、panies are learning that all these initiatives must be implemented, and in a coordinated way, if the impact of any of them is to be lasting.Over an 18-month period, Texas Instruments Defense Systems and Electronics Group moved from 26,000 employees, seven level of management, and $2 billion in reven
7、ues to 13,500 employees, every one of whom was in a cross-functional team, supervised by four levels of management while maintaining the same level of revenues and significantly improving earnings.After the merger of Asea and Brown Boveri, CEO Percy Barnevik fractured the combined companies into mor
8、e than 1300 quasi-independent business units and 5000 profit centers. At the same time, he cut the combined headquarters staffs from 4000 to 200!Gould Precision Optics is a seven-employee, family-owned New York State business in which everyone is cross-trained in everyone else job, the companys book
9、s are open to all for a monthly review and everyone has a clearly understood stake in the companys competitiveness.The positive impact of teaming on a companys organization and management is fully experienced only when teaming is made comprehensive across the company and coordinated with the delegat
10、ion of decision-making to operational personnel and the flattening of the managerial hierarchy. Teams need to be cross-functional, have a common goal, and be supported by an open information environment and expanded education and training programs.The cost of information continues to decrease, and t
11、he value of information to productivity improvement, and as a product in its own right, continues to increase. It is hardly surprising, then, that companies are creating seamless information-exchange environments, internally and with suppliers and collaborators. Companies are discovering that integr
12、ating the functionally separated divisions of a company, and thereby overcoming the linear business processes that this separation encourages, pays big dividends.The size of the investments being made in multimedia hardware and software networking technologies make evident the vision that industry h
13、olds of its future. The goal is networks that make it possible for people who are distributed worldwide to work together on the same files with simultaneous real-time audio and “video-in-a-window” Macintosh, PC, and low-end workstations are offered, at very small price premiums, with microphones and
14、 video cameras built into the keyboard and monitor cases. Network speed and bandwidth are already a reality.2. What is RP&M Manufacturing community is facing two important challenging tasks:(1)substantial reduction of product development time; and （2） improvement on flexibility for manufacturing sma
15、ll batch size products and a variety of types of products. Computer-aided design and manufacturing（CAD and CAM） have significantly improved the traditional production design and manufacturing. However, there are a number of obstacles in true integration of computer-aided design with computer-aided m
16、anufacturing for rapid development of new products. Although substantial research has been done in the past for computer-aided design and manufacturing integration, such as feature recognition, CNC programming and process planning, the gap between CAD and CAM remains unfilled in the following aspects:rapid creation of 3-D models and prototypes.cost-effective production of patterns and moulds with complex surfaces.To substantially shorten
