Future Trends in Factory Automation

This paper is a review of contemporary manufacturing technology, from both a U.S. and world perspective. It emphasizes the historical background current trends toward computerized automation in terms of the increasing societal demands for performance, which in turn generates requirements for ever greater complexity and precision. This is the root of the "quality crisis". The author believes that the next industrial revolution is a fundamental shift from the use of human workers as "micro" decision-making (machine controllers) in factors to the use of "smart sensors" for this purpose. The paper elaborates some of the more specific implications.