The Pattern of Batch Manufacture and Its Influence on Machine Tool Design

The majority of today's machine tools were developed in the first half of the 19th century. They have been improved; but not radically altered. For 150 years batch manufacture of engineering components has been carried out in factories using these machine tools as originally intended. Big factories have had more machine tools and more people but always the same basic organization, or lack of it. Because the organization has not changed, increased size has destroyed communication, and is destroying skill. A different type of organization could use the same men and equipment with great benefits if it were oriented towards the current problems. Numerical control is capable of revolutionizing batch manufacture but it has not done so, because these new machine tools have been incorporated into the old organizational structure. By lifting numerical control out of its present context and designing round it a completely new organization, order-of-magnitude improvements are possible. The first attempt to do this, and its performance, are described, together with a glimpse into the future showing the even greater improvements which will be possible when manufacture is integrated with design.