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by Alan Alper, MA Editorial Staff   | Abstract: | New classes of products have often burst onto the scene brimming with promise, only to be sobered up by the reality that automating the enterprise is no easy task. |
Our purpose is to help you better engage yourself in all areas of the changing manufacturing process. In this way only, can your company achieve the systematic, unified process that will insure future success. These words, written by Managing Automation's founding publisher Ralph E. Richardson in this publication's inaugural issue, are as true today as they were in May 1986. Richardson's pronouncement was driven as much by research as it was by the intuition that manufacturing was entering a new phase in its metamorphosis. Manufacturing was then a highly complex endeavor that mandated the careful collection and analysis of digital bits and bytes to drive business strategy and execution as much as it required more flexible operational processes inside and outside the plant's four walls. Richardson's brainstorm came well before the browser transformed the Internet from a network through which academics and researchers could share scientific research into a worldwide conduit for commercial and aesthetic pursuits. It came before China emerged as the world's low-cost competitor for assembling everything from electronic components to auto parts, apparel, and toys. It also preceded the rise of India as a global customer service powerhouse and software factory. Lastly, it came as corporate America's love affair with information technology was heating up. But it would be years before even starry-eyed futurists would declare that IT and all forms of factory automation were merely a means to an end -- not the end-all, be-all productivity accelerator that white-glove consultants were vigorously promoting at the time as the elixir for unlocking competitive advantage. [Click to continue] |