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Match the following word-combinations with their definitions.
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| 1. automation 2. robot 3. apparatus 4. assembly line 5. program 6. control 7. computer | a) a collection of instruments, machines, tools, parts, or other equipment used for a particular purpose; b) any automated machine programmed to perform specific mechanical functions in the manner of a man; c) a sequence of coded instructions fed into a computer, enabling it to perform specified logical and arithmetical operations on data; d) the use of methods for controlling industrial processes automatically, esp. by electronically controlled systems, often reducing manpower; e) a sequence of machines, tools, operations, workers, etc., in a factory, arranged so that at each stage a further process is carried out; f) a device, usually electronic, that processes data according to a set of instructions; g) a means of regulation or restraint; curb; check. |
Student independent study:
1) Tomorrow’s Factory
Machining is only one part of the overall production process in the engineering workshop. There are two more basic operations: design and administration.
In the engineering industry of the future, all three of these operations will be done with the help of computers, which will greatly reduce the need for labour.
There would be three main computers: one each for the flexible manufacturing system, design and administration. Instructions that enter the first computer control how and which goods are made; draughtsmen work out which goods they want made with the second machine; and in the third are lodged all the details about orders, scheduling, the state of stocks and so on. All three computers are linked to each other, and also to an automated warehouse from which гаw materials are passed by a transport mechanism to the factory floor and the machining area.
The few places where people would be involved with the factory’s processes would be in the design room and in a control area where the factory’s administrators sit. Draughtsmen would design products using their keyboards and screens. The codes representing these parts would come along wires to the production computer, which, in turn, would instruct its battery of machine tools to make the items. There would be a few “seeing” robots in the production department, to make the assembly job easier. Meanwhile, the factory’s administrators could keep track of the whole operation, getting information from the system by keying in instructions to their terminals.
At the heart of the factory would be a complex communications network that links all the machines in the plant so that they constantly relay instructions to each other. In this way all the machines in the plant would inform each other of what is going on. The mechanisms in the plants will be linked by wires in the same way as the telephone network connects up towns and villages, houses and offices. The main difference is that the machines will talk to each other in a binary code.
It would not be an unmanned factory, but it would be pretty near such a thing. Given the rate of technical progress, over the past ten to twenty years, such plants will be with us very soon.