Radio Frequency Identification is an automatic identification and data capture technology with huge potential in manufacturing and distribution. RFID’s broader applications in manufacturing operations include material handling, asset tracking, inventory visibility, information management, quality control and labor scheduling. Although this technology has been in use for the last twelve to thirt...

Welcome to this second lecture on advanced manufacturing processes. In this session, we will discuss the concepts of advanced manufacturing, hybrid manufacturing and their examples. The trends in manufacturing and the newer manufacturing philosophies adopted by the manufacturers to remain competitive in the market have also been presented.

2 Manufacturing companies have historically had an on-off relation with technology. Most have aggressively adopted traditional technologies such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). However, they have been slow in adopting recent digital technologies such as big data analytics, real-time order confirmation, Web-EDI among others. Moreover, most have adopted technologies to varying extent creat...

In today’s manufacturing community, flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) are becoming important. There is a global trend towards flexible manufacturing systems with an increasing number of countries competing for a share of the world market. FMS are increasingly required for companies to meet the demand for high quality, reasonably priced products. FMS allow a manufacturer to quickly change pro...

A fundamental requirement in advanced manufacturing facilities is the reliance on networked sensors, which are increasingly designed as e-Work networks with sensor collaboration. Recently, wireless microsensor network (WSN) systems have been developed and are about to gain widespread use as technology and reliability improve and prices drop. Especially, the densely distributed WSNs can signific...

This is a report of a study on the evolution of manufacturing technology policy during the deployment of domestic advanced manufacturing systems in thirty-four plants and two panels of data collection separated by one year. Changing firm environment was significantly correlated with pioneering product introduction business strategy (p < 0.05). More importantly, it was found that manufacturing t...

The PUMA (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly, or Programmable Universal Manipulation Arm) is an industrial robot arm developed at a pioneering robot company Unimation. Application engineering, design experience, and enhanced manufacturing techniques have resulted in a powerful robot line with long reach and heavier payload capabilities. The advanced design and flexibility of the robots...