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The Context in Which Manufacturing Exists
Published in Joseph Harrington, Understanding the Manufacturing Process, 2020
The objective of a manufacturing enterprise is to convert capital into a means of production, and then to convert the resulting production into revenue to replace the used capital and result in a profit. Profit is returned to the owners either by increasing the asset value of the enterprise (capital) or by returning some of the profits to the owners as dividends.
Mumford and Bataille
Published in Robert E. Kirsch, Limits to Terrestrial Extraction, 2020
This chapter will not be an attempt to analyze the entirety of Mumford’s voluminous life’s work, but rather use his writings on technics as a mode of social development and how technics shape or fail to shape a social analysis of technology, which is appropriate given that “technology” is often used to mean technics, tools, certain artifacts, and items that carry an electric charge.6 To drive down to the way Mumford deployed the term “technology” requires a reorientation in the level of analysis. While the dizzying complexity of the current context often prompts scholars of science and technology in society to focus on artifacts (such as mobile phones, social media portals, appliances, etc.) to give some empirical clarity, it is also important to take on the notion of technology itself and how it, as a way of knowing, shapes the everyday lives of people.7 Technology is etymologically rooted in the Greek word technē, which is a way of knowing by doing, and cultivating a habit of craft mastery as a conduit of personal development.8 For Aristotle, technē was a force for moral development and part of the salutary ethical life of citizenship.9 Studying technology as a social phenomenon then is how knowledge by doing shapes collective development: a matter-of-fact analysis of production and their concurrent modes of social organization.10 In a way then, technology is the means of production; how they are organized and what is produced.11 Studying technology is thus not a discrete section of social forces among others (in this regard, asking “what is technology doing to us?” is an incoherent question), but represents looking at the processes of production, the habits of thought and cultural evolution they engender, and how these relations can be changed to produce other habits of mind or new systems of production. By the same token, energy is the vector by which that production is accomplished. Technology is not a particular set of material relations but is always already intertwined in their social milieus as ways of knowing. Technology does not move about independently, at varying speeds, or intervene in otherwise normal social relations.12
Knowledge integration via the fusion of the data models used in automotive production systems
Published in Enterprise Information Systems, 2019
Rafal Cupek, Adam Ziebinski, Marek Drewniak, Marcin Fojcik
ISA95 distinguishes the purposes of the information exchanges and classifies them into four main categories: Product definition information that describes all of the manufacturing operations that have to be performed in order to make a product. This includes the production rules, material information for a specific product, the required production technology, order of the manufacturing operations and another information that is important for the production process.Production capability information, which describes all of the resources that are available at different levels of the manufacturing system. This includes all of the means of production such as the machines and tools, labour, materials and energy. The quantitative description of production capability is called capacity and is composed of committed capacity, which reflects the production resources that have been planned for executed business contracts within a given time frame, the available capacity that provides information about the possibilities of increasing the production and reflects all of the free resources and finally any unattainable capacity that reflects the resources that cannot be used within a given time frame.Production schedule information, which describes the production that should be executed. The schedule information flows down through the model from the raw production plan, which is formed on the business level to the detailed information about products that have to be manufactured and the production operations that have to be performed by the control system. The production scheduling has to take into account both the product definition and production capacity.Production performance information, which describes what has actually been produced. The production performance information is created as a response to the production schedule on different levels of the hierarchy. This includes the materials that have actually been used or produced, the actual equipment that was used for production, the actual production staff that were involved and all of the actual production parameters that were used for performed operations. The performance information is used for to verify the Work in Progress and is also used as the product and process documentation that is required by a customer or is used internally by enterprise.