SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Evolution towards automationR.T. Beaty, B.Sc, C.Eng., F.I.E.E.

Indexing terms: Engineering administration and management, Project and production engineering, Management

Abstract: The evolution towards automation in manufacturing within IBM is described, taking the plant inGreenock, Scotland, as an example. A strategy was developed, looking a decade or more ahead to the pointwhere the plant would be a high-volume low-cost facility, with full integrated automation as the goal. This maynever be completely achieved, but each process is automated when it can be justified financially. Currently, aseries of islands of automation exist within the total mosaic of the strategy. Increased productivity permitsfurther phases of capital investment and, in addition, automation ensures consistent high quality.

This paper describes the evolution towards automation inmanufacturing within IBM, and, using the plant in Gree-nock as a case in point, illustrates the business, personneland technical considerations reviewed prior to embarkingon a major investment programme.

Despite IBM's significant size, it offers a single productline to its customers worldwide. Each of the three maingeographical areas, namely the USA, Europe/Middle-East/Africa and Americas/Far-East generally manufactures theproduct line for marketing within their own area. Gree-nock's role within its Europe/Middle-East/Africa area is tomanufacture the complete range of personal computersand display terminals, including the associated keyboardsand printed-circuit boards.

The Greenock Plant started up with the manufacture oftypewriters in 1951, and employment has risen from 100then to 2800 today. The floor space has risen from 60000to one million square feet (5600 to 92 900 m2). The Planthas as its mission to be a high-quality low-cost producer ofhigh-volume work stations.

Over the 34 years the technology has changed fromhighly mechanical in content, to today's electronicmachines. In 1977, a conscious management decision wastaken to concentrate on high-volume production of arestricted number of products, and display products wereconsidered ideal. These products are at the low end of theIBM range, and, therefore, by definition, are the ones mostsubject to competition.

At this point a Strategy Committee was set up, whichthen went about describing where they wanted to be in the1980s and 1990s. A set of strategies were defined thatwould take the plant to the point where it was a high-volume low-cost facility.

All production is now either terminals or personal com-puters, comprising display units, logic units and key-boards. The range of models has been rationalised, and thevolume of output has been increased by a factor of seven.This has permitted greater investment in automated pro-cesses, increasing competitiveness, which, in turn, permitsfurther capital investment. Continuous flow manufacturebrings the time from receipt to despatch down to the

Paper 4774A (M3, M4), received 24th February 1986First presented at the IEE Colloquium on Systems engineering: its nature andscope, at the IEE, Savoy Place, London, on 13th November 1985The author is CPD Business Unit Manager, IBM UK Ltd., Spango Valley, Gree-nock, Strathclyde PA16 0AH, United Kingdom

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minimum possible, with corresponding reduction in thecapital tied up in stocks.

The strategy is to automate each of the elements in theprocess, for each product line. The goal is fully integratedautomation. This goal may never be fully achieved, butevery decision made on the route to that goal, or in devi-ation from it, is a conscious decision.

Earlier products were not designed for automation andproduction had a large manual content: the initialautomation was in the movement of ingoing and outgoingmaterial. The next link was to develop the automatedmanufacture of keyboards (of which there are 14 alter-native configurations in five languages), by means of flex-ible robotic assembly and test.

The current display products, logic units and monitorshave now been designed for robotic assembly. Material isreceived from suppliers on pallets, which are roboticallyunpacked, fed through assembly and repackaged at theend in shrink-wrapped pallets ready for shipping. Thereare minimal stock buffers in the continuous flow.

The Far East has been the cheapest producer of moni-tors, but the process designed for Greenock largelyremoves the manual content, and hence the difference inmanufacturing labour cost. In addition, automationensures consistent quality.

Surface mounting of components on single-layer circuitboards is seen as the next most significant step in PCBpackaging, and the assembly and test of these is planned tobe fully automated. An automated Materials DistributionCentre, and a carefully planned plant layout complete theprocess of material logistics.

Computers are not used solely to control the automatedprocesses, but are also widely used throughout the totalmanufacturing process in such areas as product release,tool design, process simulation, office automation,materials planning, and administration.

There are around 2000 terminals in active use through-out the facility, including the CADCAM terminals: theobjective being to move as far as is practicable towards thetotal concept of computer-integrated manufacturing(CIM).

The migration towards an integrated, automated facilityis seen as a ten-year plan, and is made up of ten distinctphases. Five of these phases are already implemented andoperational, and the remainder are planned to be commis-sioned between now and the end of the decade.

There can be little doubt that to compete successfully inthe future, manufacturing in the Western World has tomove, at least in part, towards automation.

IEE PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 133, Pt. A, No. 6, SEPTEMBER 1986