A perspective on manufacturing

Robotics & Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, Vol 4, No 3/4, pp 297-307, 1988

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A PERSPECTIVE ON MANUFACTURING* N A M P. S U H t National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C. 20550, U.S.A. INTRODUCTION The U.S.A. has been the strongest economic power during much of the 20th century, largely due to technological innovation, industrial production capability, an immense agricultural base and unique human resources. At the end of World War II, U.S. industrial production capability had reached a point where no other nation could compete with it. This long-term dominance tended to make the U.S. complacent about the need to continue to strengthen manufacturing. That is, we took the manufacturing field for granted while other nations invested heavily in new factories, manufacturing education and industrial productivity improvement. During the past decade, we have seen the consequent impact of our past neglect on the nation's economic competitiveness, on the academic infrastructure in manufacturing and design-related subjects and on the human resources base. Starting from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, the so-called engineering science era, leading universities and the scholarly community in the U.S. either ignored the manufacturing field or downgraded its importance. Many engineering educators equated engineering with engineering science. On the industrial side, the situation was not much better. Many industrial firms in the U.S. treated manufacturing as a necessary function but one that could not be improved significantly. Manufacturing, in this mode, could be handled by experienced technicians, with little research input. Many firms paid manufacturing engineers and managers less than engineers engaged in other functions. When these industrial firms were challenged by strong competitors from abroad, many took the most expedient means of improving their competitive position; that is, they turned to low-

labor cost countries off-shore as a source for their manufactured parts. While these actions may have been essential for the survival of the firms involved, they have clearly weakened our nation's manufacturing infrastructure. Today, one of the main concerns of our nation's leaders in education, industry, labor and government is related to future U.S. industrial productivity and manufacturing capability. The main driving forces for manufacturing research and education in the U.S. are to: improve international competitiveness of U.S. industries; establish an academic infrastructure in manufacturing; take advantage of opportunities offered by scientific and technological development; and maintain a strong national defense posture. The deteriorating position of the U.S. manufacturing industry is indicated by Fig. 1, which shows the balance of trade in manufactured goods during the period 1975-1985. Manufactured goods account for 75% of the merchandise trade between the U.S. and its trading partners. Figure 2 shows the balance of trade for various manufactured goods. It shows that the importation of automobiles is a major factor in our trade deficit. In 1986, the U.S. trade deficit was $170 billion, which is comparable to the foreign debt Brazil has managed to accumulate since it started borrowing from the international banking community. With the mounting need to strengthen the economic competitiveness of U.S. industrial firms, there has been an increasing demand on our universities to graduate more manufacturing engineers. Many universities are responding to this challenge by establishing educational and research programs that are geared to the engineering requirements of indus-

*Keynote Address at the International Conference on Manufacturing Science and Technology of the Future,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 3 June 1987. tNow at M.I.T., Cambridge, M A 02139, U.S.A. 297

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for Composite Manufacturing at the University of Delaware/Rutgers University; and the Center for Manufacturing Systems at Purdue University. The House Science and Technology Committee has passed the NSF Authorization Bill for FY 1988. One provision of that bill requires that at least half of the new ERCs established in FY 1988 are to be in the field of manufacturing. Although we believe that the best policy for selecting ERCs is the merit of proposals, the House Committee action makes it clear that members of Congress are concerned about U.S. manufacturing competitiveness. Also, in recognition of the important contributions science and technology can make to efforts to improve U.S. economic competitiveness, President Reagan has asked the Congress to double NSF's budget by 1992. He also instructed all government agencies that fund research to establish Science and Technology Centers at universities as a means of encouraging group efforts in cross-disciplinary fields and stimulating improvements in U.S. economic competitiveness. In hne with the President's policy, the Department of Defense recently decided to establish a "Machine Tool Research and Development Center" by giving $15 million to industry through the Machine Tool Builders Association. Industry matching of the D O D contribution is required. Now there is a bill in the U.S. Senate, introduced by Senator Hollings of South Carolina, to establish a "National Institute of Technology" by changing the mission of the National Bureau of Standards. Notwithstanding all these actions taken by the Federal Government and universities, we still cannot answer the central question with any degree of

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try. The availability of computers and new materials is now providing opportunities for research to make fundamental changes and improvements in manufacturing. Recently, a number of actions have been taken in Washington in response to the international challenge in manufacturing. In the past two years, the National Science Foundation has increased the budget for manufacturing-related research fivefold through its programs on design theory and methodology, manufacturing systems, computerintegrated engineering, automation and system integration and materials engineering and processing. We have also established several cross-disciplinary Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) in areas related to manufacturing, including: the Center for Net-Shape Manufacturing at Ohio State University; the Center for Robotics in Microelectronics at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the Center Deficits

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Perspective on manufactunng• N. P. SUH unanimity. That is, "What should universities, industry and the Federal and state governments do to strengthen the manufacturing field and enhance industrial productivity?" There are many divergent views on the subject. In this talk, I will present my own views on various aspects of manufacturing, including goals, possible research agendas, strategies and some thoughts on education and what we can do in that realm to strengthen manufacturing. GOALS OF MANUFACTURING Although there are divergent views, I believe there is general agreement that high productivity, improved human resources and achieving a greater market share are essential goals for efforts aimed at strengthening U.S. manufacturing. We may define productivity as the ratio of total output to total input. The total output is determined by the selling price and the production volume, which is influenced by the quality and the innovative features of the product. The total input consists of overhead, administrative, manufacturing, R&D, capital, marketing and distribution costs. The direct manufacturing cost is made up of the materials cost (including all incoming parts costs and energy costs), direct labor costs and capital equipment and other fixed costs. An objective of manufacturing research should be to lower overheads and manufacturing costs. 6 We can do that through effective use of computer-integrated technologies, better design techniques, better materials, improved automation technologies and new innovative materials processing techniques. To generate improved human resources, we need to produce well-educated people who can think independently and who understand the fundamentals of engineering. One of the major barriers to generating more and better educated manufacturing engineers is the lack of generalized and codified knowledge which can be readily transmitted to the student. In addition, there is a need to greatly expand fundamental knowledge in manufacturing. In engineering in general, and in manufacturing in particular, we deal with both natural laws and "artificial" (or man-made) laws. When a designer makes a design decision, he/she may have to rely on "artificial" laws during the synthesis phase. In the absence of an established "artificial" law, we must rely on ad hoc empirical information. We need to generate many "artificial" laws if we are to deal with manufacturing effectively and efficiently. In general, synthesis plays a major role in engineering, and yet, the science base for synthesis has not yet been established. The manufacturing

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system is also somewhat unique as compared with other engineering systems, such as communications, transportation and water resources, in that the total manufacturing system is a large, multi-variable, non-linear system that often has to operate with incomplete information. Furthermore, manufacturing, like many engineering fields, uses both hardware and software, both of which carry information. Automation is an attempt to transfer the software information which used to be supplied by operators into hardware and "machine" software. It is easy to appreciate the importance of marketing in attempts to obtain a greater market share. However, technology also plays a major role in determining the market share. Clearly, the ability to quickly respond to customers' needs or to the demands of the market place should enable a firm to increase its market share. This requires flexible manufacturing systems, CAD/CAM, CIM, flexible tooling, etc., all of which depend on sophisticated technology. Another means of increasing the market share is by reducing both the time and cost of introducing new products. Currently, the design time, testing time of prototypes, tooling time, etc., are extremely long because of trial and error processes currently used in industry. In the light of these goals, what should universities, industry and government do? Let me present a few possible agenda items related to manufacturing for universities, government and industry to accomplish. A G E N D A FOR UNIVERSITIES There are three major missions of a university: education, advancement of the intellectual (knowledge) base and public service. Public service is provided by universities through different modes. However, in this discussion, we will concentrate only on education and research because they are key to efforts to strengthen U.S. manufacturing.

A.

Education One of the first educational issues many industrial leaders and engineering societies are concerned about is the adequacy of educational programs for manufacturing engineering, both in numbers of engineers produced and their quality. The quality issue is a difficult one because of the breadth and depth of knowledge required and the need for comprehensive understanding. The quality issue also depends on the expected role of manufacturing engineers. If they are to become creative engineers who can invent new processes or machines or systems, they will need a broad knowledge base as well as in-depth specialized knowledge. Obvi-

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ously, it may be difficult to generate such manufacturing engineers in four years. On the other hand, if they are to become a manufacturing engineer who can operate a well-established factory, then they may need a better understanding of labor and management relations in addition to having a broad technical background Consequently, when we discuss the educational needs for people who are going to serve as engineers, divergent views emerge. That is understandable because there are differing views on education versus training and on prerequisites for becoming a manufacturing engineer. These controversies disappear at the Master's degree level, since, at this level, it is easier to satisfy both the depth and breadth issues. However, there are other difficult issues as we shall see later. In terms of the number of "manufacturing" engineers produced each year, about 5% of B.S. graduates (4000 out of a total of 73,000) may be broadly classified as "manufacturing" engineers. That includes the graduates of industrial engineering curricula. At the Ph.D. level, the percentage ratio is about the same, about 150 doctorates granted to people with "manufacturing" backgrounds out of about 3200 Ph.D.s awarded each year. These numbers are certainly on the low side, but if we consider the number of practicing manufacturing engineers with a formal engineering education, the situation is much worse. Out of 1.4 million practicing engineers in the U.S., only 3000 manufacturing engineers hold formal engineering degrees! Even if we assume that only 5% of 1.4 million practicing engineers are manufacturing engineers, nearly all of them achieved their engineering status through "inhouse" training in industry. It is clear that more engineering graduates must be employed by manufacturing firms to deal with increasingly technical and complicated manufacturing issues. To deal with the quantity and quality issues, the first task is to establish manufacturing engineering as an a c a d e m i c discipline. Manufacturing engineering is not yet an academic discipline because of the lack of sufficient codified knowledge and systematic fundamental principles that can be applied to a variety of problems. There is also a lack of uniformly accepted curricula for manufacturing engineering as well as basic textbooks. Many research universities believe that a significant body of fundamental knowledge must exist first through basic research before a quality educational program can be established. In many of these schools, research in a given field precedes the establishment of graduate level educational programs, which in turn precedes the establishment of undergraduate programs.

Research universities have produced many of the fundamental textbooks in emerging academic disciplines. Since second-tier institutions do not have research programs, they have to depend on industry and research universities for much of their intellectual inputs for their educational programs in these emerging disciplines. Today, they are under pressure to produce greater numbers of manufacturing engineers, but they lack adequate intellectual and financial resources to do so. If there is one engineering subject which can justify continuing education or life-long education, it is manufacturing engineering. The subject matters are diverse and continually changing, requiring a constant updating of the knowledge base. Since much of this knowledge must be acquired on one's own during industrial practice, students must be taught how to learn on their own using teaching aids. One of the most urgent tasks is the development of teaching aids, such as software, textbooks, simulator packages and even an engineering counterpart to the medical profession's "teaching hospitals". A number of national meetings have been organized to discuss various means of upgrading education for manufacturing engineers. The Society of Manufacturing Engineers and some major industrial firms have been advocating the establishment of B.S. level manufacturing degree programs. The number of schools offering such a degree has been increasing very slowly. Many prefer to teach the subject as a subset of existing engineering disciplines. In my opinion, degree programs at the M.S. level may satisfy the need of the manufacturing field better than B.S. programs in manufacturing. Some schools, such as M.I.T., have under discussion the desirability of establishing dual Master's degree programs where the student earns two Master's degrees upon the completion of the requirement, one in engineering and one in management. Educationally, such programs make a great deal of sense. However, unless industry is willing to employ these graduates for their manufacturing functions at a salary comparable to those paid in finance and in R&D, these programs will not be very successful. Notwithstanding the national concern about the health of our manufacturing enterprise, there are many impediments or barriers to efforts aimed at strengthening manufacturing education. For example, to attract the best minds to manufacturing engineering, we need more qualified faculty members, an improved and competitive industrial salary structure, and better teaching materials. We must also make manufacturing intellectually challenging and exciting. Also, the manufacturing field does not have enough successful role models. That is in sharp

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Perspective on manufacturing• N. P. SUH contrast to the situation we have with MBAs, because so many of them have become Chief Executive Officers and Chief Operating Officers of major corporations. There are ample MBA models. We have a long way to go to bring manufacturing engineers into the top echelons of management of many corporations. B.

Research Research issues in manufacturing are diverse and cross-disciplinary. Manufacturing is a complex field and involves engineering as well as non-engineering issues; systems issues as well as narrow technical issues; human issues as well as non-human issues; and hardware and software issues among others. Figure 3 illustrates the hierarchical nature of research issues in manufacturing. The subject of this conference, intelligence in manufacturing, can be applied at all levels of the hierarchy. At the highest level, we must deal with the totality of the entire manufacturing system which can then be reduced to engineering and non-engineering issues. Obviously, there are many different ways of unbundling research issues. Research priorities often depend on the specific materials and processes used to manufacture their products. In the case of discrete parts manufacturing involving metallic parts, systems integration involving CIM may be one of the most urgent research issues. However, in the field of polymer and composite manufacturing, process innovation may still be the most challenging and promising area. In the semiconductor business, U.S. industry has ignored

the importance of process research and the development of new equipment. That is one reason why we are losing our competitive edge to Japanese firms. Let me cite three specific process innovations to illustrate the kind of innovation that is possible: microcellular foam plastics, 1'2 mixalloying process 3'4'5 and laser machining. The first two are works I originated and the last one was the result of work done by my colleague, Professor George Chryssolouris, at M.I.T. Microcellular foam plastics are polymeric materials with a large number of uniform-sized, very small bubbles of the order of 2-10 #m. Because the voids or bubbles are smaller than the pre-existing flaw size in these materials, cracks do not propagate from these bubbles. They can also act as crack tip blunting sites and crazing sites (in the case of polystyrene), making these microcellular plastics very tough. They can absorb as much as six to seven times more energy during fracture than regular solid plastic. These plastics look like a solid plastic because of the extremely small voids, but the density of microcellular plastics can be from 20 to 50% less than the original solid plastic. The idea for microcellular plastics came from research conducted at M.I.T. for industrial firms. One of the industrial firms asked us to devise a way of minimizing material consumption which was the major item in their manufacturing costs. A typical industrial solution is to put low-cost fillers into plastic, but that lowers toughness which is not a satisfactory solution. In searching for a solution, a deci-

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sion was made to create microcellular plastic. The question was, " H o w can we create a process that can make microcellular plastics?" The idea we, my graduate student, June Martini, and I, worked on was to use a thermodynamic instability phenomenon to nucleate a large number of small bubbles simultaneously. Simultaneous nucleation is a fundamental requirement in assuring uniform cell size. Otherwise, the cells which nucleated first become larger because of the preferential diffusion of gas to larger cells. We exposed plastics to high pressure gas and allowed the gas to dissolve in the matrix. After the plastic was saturated with gas at high pressure, the plastic could be heated under pressure to a temperature higher than the glass transition temperature of amorphous plastics (in the case of crystalline polymers to a temperature just above its melting point). When the pressure was suddenly released, the gas that was dissolved in the plastic was no longer in an equilibrium state. The gas then tried to form a separate phase and, in that process, nucleated a large number of bubbles. A somewhat different variation is to use the change in the solubility of gas as a function of temperature to accomplish the same goal. The second innovation was the mixalloying process which was created to improve the mechanical and electric properties of metal alloys by controlling the microstructure of metals. 3'4'5 The idea was to find a way to design and process a microstructure of dispersion hardened alloy to control the yield strength, toughness and electric conductivity of metal alloys. In the case of copper, we found that if we put very fine hard particles (of the order of 200/~) in the copper matrix, a few thousand angstroms apart (a few tenths of a micrometer), then the yield strength would be controlled by the spacing between the particles. Due to the stress required to extrude dislocations through these hard particles by the Orowan mechanism, which is given by 2Gb l

where r is the shear strength, G is the shear modulus, b is the Burgers rector (see Fig. 4) and I is the spacing between the particles. The mixalloying process starts with two molten liquid metals, A and B. They are mixed intimately by impingement mixing which uses the turbulent mixing phenomenon (see Fig. 5). Our research on mixing indicated to us that the turbulent eddy size is a function of the Reynolds number. Since metals are heavy in density and low in viscosity, we can have a very high Reynolds number at moderate fluid veloc-

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Fig. 5. Mlxalloymgprocess. ity. Laminar flow in a pipe becomes a turbulent flow as the liquid is discharged into a tank and the liquid jet is at a Reynolds number greater than 50-100. In theory, submicrometer size eddies can be created easily. When these two liquid jets impinge, they mix intimately at a microscale. When A and B are solutions with chemically reacting components, the final mixture can have reaction products dispersed in a matrix. For example, A can be a solution of copper with dissolved oxygen and B can be a solution of copper with dissolved aluminum. The resulting product is a copper with finely dispersed aluminum oxide particles. Another interesting process being developed at M.I.T. is laser beam machining under the direction of Professor George Chryssolouris. In this process, deep grooves are cut along the two orthogonal directions using two orthogonal laser beams. This removes a big chunk of the workpiece rather than creating small chips. It has the promise of becoming an important material removal process, especially for ceramics. These new processes illustrate that innovation can play a significant role in future manufacturing operations together with CIM and other computer-based

Perspective on manufacturing• N P. SUH technologies. At the National Science Foundation, we have been concerned about whether or not university researchers are taking advantage of opportunities for major innovations in the manufacturing field. Therefore, in 1987, NSF sponsored a major workshop, "New Strategic Manufacturing Initiatives", under the chairmanship of Dr. M. Eugene Merchant. The workshop established five working groups to develop research priorities. The topics of the working groups were: product design, computerintegrated engineering, manufacturing process and machine systems, automation and system integration and materials engineering and processing. Eighty-six people participated in these working groups. We do not yet have the final report from the workshop, but the working groups have submitted the following topics and priority rankings for consideration. The highest priority rankings were given to sensor-based control of manufacturing equipment and processes, life-cycle product and process engineering, implementation technology, database structure for C A D / C A M and manufacturing process modeling adequate for CAD/ CAM. Dr. Merchant has stressed that the rankings are so close that all 16 recommendations made by the working group deserve NSF support. In spite of these recommendations and the many factors that have been taken into account, we continue to be concerned about the best way to insure progress. There are always criticisms of the approach taken through workshops or otherwise. Someone will always criticize any set of priorities that are recommended. So, we take a lot of criticism on whatever course of action is taken and whatever research priorities are set. The Merchant workshop recommendations will be no exception. However, my feelings is that NSF should be responsive to the recommendations made by the Merchant workshop. We will continue to keep the door open for other good ideas as well. The search must go on for major breakthroughs in manufacturing which can make a significant impact, just as NC machines have done! One of the ideas I have been working on during the past ten years is the axiomatic approach to design and manufacturing. 7 The idea is to capture all the generalizable effective know-how and knowledge in a form of axioms and apply them to all problems The history of science has many examples where axioms have fundamentally changed the course of intellectual and technological endeavors and progress. Newton's laws and thermodynamic laws are either axioms or based on axioms. The two axioms I offered are the Independence Axiom and the

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Information Axiom. The Independence Axiom states that the functional requirements in the functional domain must be maintained independently by the proposed solutions in the physical domain. The Information Axiom states that the information content associated with satisfying a given set of functional requirements must be minimized. Based on these axioms, new processes such as the mixalloying process can be designed. From these axioms, corollaries and theorems can be derived which can be used in designing manufacturing systems, s Also, Prolog has been used to build a software shell which can make logical design decisions using these axioms. AGENDA FOR GOVERNMENT TO STRENGTHEN MANUFACTURING

TECHNOLOGIES Since it is now generally recognized that the international competitiveness of U.S. manufactured goods must be enhanced, it is clear that the Federal Government must play a significant role in strengthening the manufacturing infrastructure of the U.S.A. We are running a trade deficit of about $170 billion annually at the present time. Solving that problem may require significant long-term investments, especially in manufacturing. Many government agencies have a role to play in enhancing the economic competitiveness of the U.S. The tax policies of the Treasury Department, the procurement and R&D policies of the Department of Defense, the trade promotion and patent policies of the Department of Commerce, the regulatory policies of EPA and other agencies and the research and education policies of the National Science Foundation have major impacts on U.S. economic competitiveness. Clearly, the Federal budget deficit creates enormous pressure on interest rates and other monetary and fiscal policies of the Government, which all have an effect on the abilities of our manufacturing firms to compete for international markets. The National Science Foundation must continue to do its part in strengthening the manufacturing base of the U.S.A. Our strategic plan for the NSF Engineering Directorate over the next five years calls for increasing the budget of the Design, Manufacturing and Computer-Integrated Engineering Division to $50 million a year. It is currently only $14 million. The plan also calls for significant increases for materials engineering and processing. It provides for establishing several more manufacturing related ERCs at an average annual budget of $4-5 million per year per center; and it includes expanded support activities to improve under-

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graduate engineering education. The goal of our undergraduate engineering education programs is to change the engineering science dominated educational program to a more balanced program. We want to give more balanced emphasis to synthesis and analysis, to technology-driven and sciencedriven subjects and to experimental and analytical techniques. We estimate the cost of achieving this balance to be about $50 million in additional annual support. Obviously, the National Science Foundation with a budget of about $1.6 billion cannot be expected to solve the nation's problems in manufacturing. Most of our $1.6 billion goes into very basic areas of science. Therefore, NSF must act as a catalyst in creating an environment that is conducive for technological innovation, for advances in fundamental knowledge and for producing first-rate engineers. A number of incentives have been provided to date to achieve this goal. For example, NSF's Expedited Grants for Novel Research provide a $30,000 grant quickly, without the necessity for external peer review. We provide these funds when researchers have especially creative ideas that need to be explored quickly. Similar incentives must be created for innovation in education as well. Again, the importance of such a program is that it affects the culture of the research community by emphasizing the creative aspects of research rather than concentrating on improvements at the margin. One of the major initiatives of NSF during the past two and a half years has been to encourage cross-disciplinary research, where several disciplines collaborate on a common problem. Manufacturing research is particularly suited for cross-disciplinary research since almost every aspect of manufacturing involves diverse disciplines. NSF will continue to encourage cross-disciplinary research. But, I want to stress, we plan to do that without reducing the support for single investigator initiated research projects. There are many opportunities for singleinvestigator projects to make significant contributions and we want to support them. We also want to expand the Foundation's role in promoting technology transfer. NSF's Industry/ University Cooperative Research Centers Program now participates in the support of about 40 centers. Many of those centers are highly successful. We have also established 13 ERCs. While these programs promote collaboration between universities and industry, there remains a need for other mechanisms that will encourage the full utilization of the nation's R&D resources. One of these mechanisms might be the creation of

a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program which is specifically designed to promote industrial utilization of NSF-sponsored research results. This would involve the support of small business firms that are engaged in further developing university research results. This differs from the conventional SBIR program which supports research performed at small business firms. Another mechanism might be an industry/university/National Laboratory collaboration. This would make available the vast research infrastructure and unclassified research results of National Laboratories to the research community and industry. The Federal Government is spending about $18 billion annually at National and other Federal Research Laboratories. Another mechanism is to strengthen the role of state governments in promoting collaboration between universities and industry. State governments have a strong influence on their state universities because of the funding they provide. Recently many state governments have realized that the presence of strong research universities can have a significant impact on the development of the state's economy. Therefore, there are strong incentives for state governments to actively promote technology transfer from their universities to local industry. We are studying the role of NSF in strengthening mature industries such as steel and textiles. Current NSF programs support basic research that is related to these fields. However it appears that all these industrial firms need to strengthen the management of their technological enterprise. Therefore, it may be appropriate to consider the establishment of research support in the field of management of technology. I believe other government agencies have much to contribute to strengthening the industrial base of the nation. At the risk of being criticized for straying onto another agency's turf, I would like to offer a few general observations. First, it would be desirable in the long run to increase the support for basic research at universities. Perhaps a fixed fraction, say 1% of the Federal procurement budget, should be allocated for support of basic and applied research at universities. If it is done effectively, it could reduce future procurement costs through the advent of new technologies and a better understanding of fundamental principles. Certainly government agencies which operate National or Federal Laboratories must consider ways to encourage these laboratories to actively participate in research and development of interest to U.S. industry. They can provide facilities; they can support

Perspective on m a n u f a c t u n n g • N. P. SUH

research at universities through graduate student and faculty exchange programs of various sorts; and they can encourage marketing of their unclassified R&D results for industrial use. In some cases, the best way of promoting technology transfer from these laboratories to industry would be to allow laboratory personnel to take the technology outside the laboratory and establish new venture firms. In some cases, these laboratories could act as a joint user facility where university researchers and graduate students can come to perform experimental work. All research funding agencies should have much more active information dissemination mechanisms in place. Very few people know the full spectrum of research activities that are taking place in the U.S. in manufacturing related fields. Very imaginative and creative information dissemination should.be an ongoing program of each agency. Standard newsletters, etc., may not suffice. AGENDA FOR INDUSTRY It may be presumptuous for someone who is not managing a large manufacturing firm to make suggestions on how industry might improve its productivity. However, there are some global issues related to manufacturing which must be dealt with by industry as a whole. These issues relate to human resources and technical issues. I think most of us would agree that what makes the difference in any organization is the quality of personnel. Although our productivity problems cannot be traced solely to manufacturing engineers, it is clear that some of our best engineers must work in manufacturing operations if we are to make progress. For this to happen, industry must establish a competitive salary structure and provide promotional opportunities for manufacturing engineers and managers. The adage that "you get what you pay for" is true, especially in the field of manufacturing. I also believe that some of the chief manufacturing engineers and plant managers in our factories should be engineers who hold advanced degrees in manufacturing. People with doctorates should not be excluded from moving into these key positions. Many of our Ph.D. students in manufacturing engineering minor in business management and the doors to top manufacturing management jobs should be open to them. We need people who can manage technology better. That requires people who understand both management and technological issues. We also need to promote industry/university interaction. Industry must support and cooperate with universities in establishing courses, curricula and research programs. Although several major cor-

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porations such as IBM have done their part in rejuvenating the manufacturing infrastructure in our universities, most of our engineering schools can benefit through greater interaction with industry. Manufacturing in the 1990s will continue to undergo rapid technological changes. To be proficient in their occupation, manufacturing engineers and educators must be given opportunities to update themselves through involvement in continuing education. They should take advantage of special courses. M.I.T. and other schools have found it necessary to have their faculty members update themselves by taking even freshman subjects in such areas as computer programming. Industry should join universities and government in developing various teaching modules which utilize computer software and videotapes that can be used by engineers in industry to supplement their knowledge base. In technical areas, industry can also do much to improve its efficiency. It is my general observation that we do not fully understand how best to manage the technological enterprise. We do not have methodologies for system integration, optimization of man/machine interface, effective utilization of databases, cost effective purchase and use of capital equipment, optimum decision making in design and manufacturing and many others. Clearly, our industries must improve their design capability and design/manufacturing interface in order to increase productivity. First of all, welldesigned products command a higher selling price. Essentially similar products can sell for significantly different prices because of the perceived value of the product. Well-designed products which incorporate manufacturing considerations can reduce the materials cost, lower overheads, minimize the capital investment requirement, and at the same time, improve reliability, maintainability and manufacturability. There has to be more systematic improvement in design techniques through education and a reward system. Given the high labor cost of U.S. industry in general, we must increase our productivity through technological innovation, as discussed earlier. Technological innovation can be applied to existing products and processes as well as to new products. As a study by the Brookings Institution and other studies indicate, about 44% of the U.S. productivity increase since the 1950s has been due to technological innovations. The ability of the U.S. to generate a stream of new innovations has been one of the distinct advantages we have had over other nations. I also believe that our industrial firms must be more alert in identifying new technologies that can

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help them. They can do this by having a closer liaison with our universities. It was our universities which showed that a magnetic field can help in growing larger and more pure semiconductor crystals. However, it was a Japanese firm which capitalized on that knowledge and developed more advanced technology which has improved their productivity. It may be that our industrial firms are not being as aggressive as they should be in pursuing the research results provided by our research community. To the extent that it makes good economic sense, American industrial firms that manufacture wellestablished products with reasonable production volume must resort to automation to be competitive with other nations which have lower labor costs. Some E u r o p e a n nations have been more active in automating their factories than we have because of their more rigid employment policies. As a consequence, they may be able to increase their productivity at a greater rate than the U.S. firms in the future. AGENDA FOR MANUFACTURING RESEARCH AND THE EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY Manufacturing engineers have made enormous contributions in making manufacturing an exciting field. However, if we ask what has had the most significant impact on manufacturing, it seems to me that we must cite NC machines, computers and new materials as having had the most significant impact. These developments have come largely from other disciplines. The reason why it is important for us to remember this is that we must periodically reexamine our research agenda and see if we are truly addressing the most important issues. University engineering faculty should become more knowledgeable about manufacturing technology. To do that, it is imperative that university researchers and educators work with industrialists and engineers in industry as consultants, collaborators and colleagues on campus. It is also clear that, during the past several decades, government policies have affected the direction of academic research programs and, thus, educational programs as well. All indications are that this will continue to be the case because the government's decision on resource allocations can and will have an immense impact either positively or negatively on the future of manufacturing education and research. Therefore, it is imperative that the manufacturing community provide inputs to government officials. The cooperation and collaboration among people in universities,

industry and government is key to efforts to strengthen the manufacturing field. In recent years, many eminent engineers from other fields have begun to work in the field of manufacturing. When we go to conferences, we no longer see the same faces we used to see all the time. This trend must continue since manufacturing involves many disciplines such as materials, material processing, computer science, control, chemistry, operations research and management. As I pointed out earlier, life-long learning is and must be a part of an engineer's professional life. At this time, the most urgent task of the manufacturing community is the development of an educational program that meets the requirements of the 21st century, in addition to meeting current industrial requirements. The task is no less than to generate the world's future industrial leaders. To be competitive in our increasingly high tech world, future captains of industry must be steeped in engineering as well as business. CONCLUSIONS 1. This conference deals with intelligent manufacturing systems. To make the manufacturing system intelligent, we must generalize and systematize the existing knowledge base. The contributions made by you at this conference are an important step toward the development of an intelligent manufacturing system. 2. We have a unique historical opportunity to make a significant contribution. We must respond to these exciting and challenging opportunities creatively. 3. I believe that we need a better balance among research efforts. We need to develop ad hoc solutions to current problems, but we must not neglect basic and fundamental research. 4. We must understand the basics of design and synthesis as well as apply the analytical techniques to replace intuitive decisions. We cannot solve manufacturing problems if we ignore the basic elements of the manufacturing field, namely processing, systems, machines and their integration. 5. For the U.S., it is clear that we must have more highly qualified educated manufacturing engineers in industry. They must be given a broad background as well as specialized knowledge, so that they will be intellectually equipped to be future leaders in industry, academia and government. 6. The reason the field of manufacturing is at center stage today is because one of the highest

Perspective on manufacturing • N. P SuH priorities for the nation is the strengthening of U.S. economic competitiveness. We must do our part. 7. Finally, we need to p r o m o t e international cooperation in the manufacturing field since all free nations will benefit through increased wealth for all people.

REFERENCES 1. Martim, J., Waldman F., Suh, N.P.: The production and analysis of microcellular thermoplastic foam. SPE ANTEC, May 1982. 2. Martini-Vvedensky, J.E., Suh, N.P., Waldman, F.A.: Microcellular closed cell foams and their method of

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

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manufacture. U.S. Patent 4,473,665, 25 September, 1984. Suh, N.P.: Method for forming metal, ceramic or polymer compositions application. U.S. Patent 4,278,622, 14 July, 1981. Suh, N.P.: Orthonormal processing of metals--Part I: concept and theory. J. Engng. Ind. Trans. ASME 104: 327-331, 1981. Sub, N.P. et al: Orthonormal processing of metals --Part II: mixalloying process. J. Engng. Ind. Trans. ASME 1114: 332-338, 1982. Suh, N.P.: The future of the factory. Robotics Comput.-Integr. Mfg. 1: 39-49, 1984. Suh, N.P.: The design axioms and their applications. Robotics Comput.-Integ. Mfg. 1: (1985). Suh, N.P.: The Principles of Design, Oxford Press, New York, 1988.