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Automation: What It Means to Us Around the World 3.1 The Meaning of Automation 15

Table 3.1 Automation examples: ancient to early history

Machine/system AutonomousAutonomy:Powersource Replacing Process

action/ control/ withouthuman

function intelligence intervention

1. Irrigation Direct, regulate From-to, Gravity Manual Water ﬂow

channels water ﬂow on-off gates, watering and directions

predetermined

2. Water supply Direct, regulate From-to, Gravity Practically Water ﬂow

by aqueducts over water supply on-off gates, impossible and directions

large distances predetermined

3. Sundial clocks Display current Predetermined Sunlight Impossible Shadow

time timing otherwise indicating time

4. Archytas’ Flying; Predetermined Heated air Real birds; Mechanical

ﬂying pigeon playing; sound and steam human play bird or toy

(4th century BC); chirping; and movements (early hydraulics motions

Chinese mechanical moving with some and pneumatics) and sounds

orchestra feedback

(3rd century BC)

Heron’s mechanical

chirping birds

and moving dolls

(1st century AD)

5. Ancient Greek Open Preset states Heated air, Manual Door

temple automatic and close door and positions steam, water, open movements

door opening with some gravity and close

feedback

6. Windmills Grinding grains Predeﬁned Winds Animal Grinding

grinding and human process

power

Table 3.2 Automation platforms

Platform Machine Tool Device Installation System System

of systems

Example Mars lander Sprinkler Pacemaker AS/RC ERP Internet

(automated storage/ (enterprise resource

retrieval carousel) planning)

software (even though some use the term software au-

tomaton to imply computing procedures). The scholar

Al-Jazari from al-Jazira, Mesopotamia designed pio-

neering programmable automatons in 1206, as a set of

dolls, or humanoid automata. Today, the most typical

automatons are what we deﬁne as robots.

Part A 3.1

16 Part A Development and Impacts of Automation

Table 3.3 Automation examples: Industrial Revolution to 1920

Machine/system AutonomousAutonomy:PowerReplacing Process

action/function control/ source withouthuma n

intelligence intervention

1. Windmills Flour milling Feedback keeping Winds Nonfeedback Milling process

(17th century) blades always windmills

facing the wind

2. Automatic Steam pressure Feedback control Steam Practically Pressure

pressure valve in piston or of steam pressure impossible regulation

(Denis Papin, 1680) engine otherwise

3. Automatic Continuous-ﬂow Conveyor speed Water ﬂow; Human labor Grains

grist mill ﬂour production control; milling steam conveyance and

(Oliver Evans, 1784) line process control milling process

4. Flyball governor Control of steam Automatic Steam Human control Speed regulation

(James Watt, 1788) engine speed feedback of

centrifugal force

for speed control

5. Steamboats, trains Transportation Basic speed Steam Practically Travel,

(18–19th century) over very large and navigation impossible freight hauling,

distances controls otherwise conveyance

6. Automatic loom Fabric weaving, Basic process Steam Human labor Cloth weaving

(e.g., Joseph including control programs and supervision according to

Jacquard, 1801) intricate patterns by interchangeable human design

punched card of fabric program

7. Telegraph Fast delivery On-off, direction, Electricity Before tele- Movement of

(Samuel Morse, 1837) of text message and feedback communication, text over wires

over large practically

distances impossible

otherwise

Part A 3.1

Automation: What It Means to Us Around the World 3.1 The Meaning of Automation 17

Table 3.3 (cont.)

Machine/system AutonomousAutonomy:PowerReplacing Process

action/function control/ source withouthuman

intelligence intervention

8. Semiautomatic Assembly functions Connect/ Electricity; Human labor Complex

assembly machines including disconnect; compressed sequences

(Bodine Co., 1920) positioning, process control air through of assembly

drilling, tapping, belts operations

screw insertion, and pulleys

pressing

9. Automatic Chassis Parts, components, Electricity Human labor Manufacturing

automobile- production and products ﬂow and supervision processes

chassis plant control, machining, and part

(A.O. Smith Co., and assembly handling with

1920) process control better accuracy

Robot

A robot is a mechanical device that can be pro-

grammed to perform a variety of tasks of manipulation

and locomotion under automatic control. Thus, a robot

could also be an automaton. But unlike an automa-

ton, a robot is usually designed for highly variable

and ﬂexible, purposeful motions and activities, and

for speciﬁc operation domains, e.g., surgical robot,

service robot, welding robot, toy robot, etc. General

Motors implemented the ﬁrst industrial robot, called

UNIMATE, in 1961 for die-casting at an automobile

factory in New Jersey. By now, millions of robots

are routinely employed and integrated throughout the

world.

Robotics

The science and technology of designing, building, and

applying robots, computer-controlled mechanical de-

vices, such as automated tools and machines. Science

Automation

Examples:

Automation

1. Automation without robots/robotics

2. Automation also applying robotics

3. Robotics

• Factory robots

• Soccer robot team

• Medical nanorobots

2. Automation including robotics

• Safety protection automation able to

activate fire-fighting robots when needed

• Spaceship with robot arm

1. a) Just computers;

b) Automatic devices but no

robots

• Decision-support systems (a)

• Enterprise planning (a)

• Water and power supply (b)

• Office automation (a+b)

• Aviation administration (a+b)

• Ship automation (a+b)

• Smart building (a+b)

Fig. 3.2 The relation between robotics and automation: The scope

of automation includes applications: (1a) with just computers,

(1b) with various automation platforms and applications, but

without robots; (2) automation including also some robotics; (3) au-

tomation with robotics

Part A 3.1

18 Part A Development and Impacts of Automation

Table 3.4 Automation examples: modern and emerging

Machine/ AutonomousAutonomy:Power Replacing Process

system action/function control/ source withouthuman

intelligence intervention

1. Automatic Opening and Automatic control Compressed air Human effort Doors of buses,

door opener closing of doors or electric motor trains, buildings open

triggered and close

by sensors by themselves

2. Elevators, Lifting, carrying On-off; feedback; Hydraulic Human Speed and movements

cranes preprogrammed pumps; climbing, require minimal

or interactive electric motors carrying supervision

3. Digital Data processing Variety of automatic Electricity Calculations at Cognitive

computers and computing and interactive speeds, complexity, and decision-

functions control and operating and with amounts making

systems; of data that functions

intelligent control are humanly

impossible

4. Automatic Steering aircraft Same as (3) Electrical Human pilot Navigation,

pilot or boat motors operations,

e.g., landing

5. Automatic Switch gears Automatic control Electricity; Manual Engaging/

transmission of power hydraulic transmission disengaging

transmission pumps control rotating gears

6. Ofﬁce Document Same as (3) Electricity Some manual Speciﬁc ofﬁce

automation processing, work; some procedures

imaging, is practically

storage, printing impossible

7. Multirobot Robot arms and Optimal, adaptive, Hydraulic Human labor Complex operations

factories automatic devices distributed, robust, pumps, and supervision and procedures,

perform variety self-organizing, pneumatics, including quality

of manufacturing collaborative, and electric assurance

and production and other motors

processes intelligent control

Part A 3.1

Automation: What It Means to Us Around the World 3.1 The Meaning of Automation 19

ﬁction author and scientist Isaac Asimov coined the

term robotics in 1941 to describe the technology of

robots and predicted the rise of a signiﬁcant robot in-

dustry, e.g., in his foreword to [3.1]:

Since physics and most of its subdivisions rou-

tinely have the “-ics” sufﬁx, I assumed that robotics

was the proper scientiﬁc term for the systematic

study of robots, of their construction, mainte-

nance, and behavior, and that it was used as

such.

3.1.2 Robotics and Automation

Robotics is an important subsetof automation(Fig. 3.2).

For instance, of the 25 automation examples in Ta-

bles 3.1, 3.3 and 3.4, examples 4 in Table 3.1 and 7 in

Table 3.4 are about robots. Beyond robotics, automation

includes:

•

Infrastructure, e.g., water supply, irrigation, power

supply, telecommunication

•

Nonrobot devices, e.g., timers, locks, valves, and

sensors

•

Automatic and automated machines, e.g., ﬂour

mills, looms, lathes, drills, presses, vehicles, and

printers

•

Automatic inspection machines, measurementwork-

stations, and testers

•

Installations, e.g., elevators, conveyors, railways,

satellites, and space stations

•

Systems, e.g., computers, ofﬁce automation, Inter-

net, cellular phones, and software packages.

Common to both robotics and automation are use of

automatic control, and evolution with computing and

communication progress. As in automation, robotics

also relies on four major components, including a plat-

form, autonomy, process, and power source, but in

robotics, a robot is often considered a machine, thus

the platform is mostly a machine, a tool or device, or

a system of tools and devices. While robotics is, in

a major way, about automation of motion and mobil-

ity, automation beyond robotics includes major areas

based on software, decision-making, planning and op-

timization, collaboration, process automation, ofﬁce

automation, enterprise resource planning automation,

and e-Services. Nevertheless, there is clearly an overlap

between automation and robotics; while to most peo-

ple a robot means a machine with certain automation

intelligence, to many an intelligent elevator, or highly

Table 3.4 (cont.)

Machine/ AutonomousAutonomy:PowerReplacing Process

system action/function control/ source withouthuman

intelligence intervention

8. Medical Visualization Automatic control; Electricity Impossible Noncontact testing

diagnostics of medical test automatic virtual otherwise and results

(e.g., computerized results reality presentation

tomography (CT), in real time

magnetic

resonance

imaging (MRI))

Wireless Remote Predictive control; Electricity Practically Monitoring remote

services prognostics interacting with impossible equipment functions,

and automatic radio frequency otherwise executing

repair identiﬁcation (RFID) s

elf-repairs

and sensor networks

10. Internet Finding Optimal control; Electricity Human search, Search for speciﬁc infor-

search engine requested multiagent control practically mation over a vast

information impossible amount of data over

worldwide systems

Part A 3.1

20 Part A Development and Impacts of Automation

automated machine tool, or even a computer may also

imply a robot.

Cybernetics

Cybernetics is the scientiﬁc study of control and

communication in organisms, organic processes, and

mechanical and electronic systems. It evolves from

kibernetes, in Greek, meaning pilot, or captain, or

governor, and focuses on applying technology to

replicate or imitate biological control systems, of-

ten called today bioinspired, or system biology.

Cybernetics, a book by Norbert Wiener, who is at-

tributed with coining this word, appeared in 1948

and inﬂuenced artiﬁcial intelligence research. Cy-

Table 3.5 Deﬁnitions of automation (after [3.2])

Source Deﬁnition of automation

1. John Diebold, President,

John Diebold & Associates,

Inc.

It is a means of organizing or controlling production processes to achieve

optimum use of all production resources – mechanical, material, and

human. Automation means optimization of our business and industrial ac-

tivities.

2. Marshall G. Nuance, VP,

York Corp.

Automation is a new word, and to many people it has become a scare word.

Yet it is not essentially different from the process of improving methods of

production which has been going on throughout human history.

3. James B. Carey, President,

International Union of

Electrical Workers

When I speak of automation, I am referring to the use of mechanical and

electronic devices, rather than human workers, to regulate and control the

operation of machines. In that sense, automation represents something rad-

ically different from the mere extension of mechanization. Automation is

a new technology. Arising from electronics and electrical engineering.

4. Joseph A. Beirne, President,

Communications Workers of

America

We in the telephone industry have lived with mechanization and its succes-

sor automation for many years.

5. Robert C. Tait, Senior VP,

General Dynamics Corp.

Automation is simply a phrase coined, I believe, by Del Harder of Ford Mo-

tor Co. in describing their recent supermechanization which represents an

extension of technological progress beyond what has formerly been known

as mechanization.

6. Robert W. Burgess, Director,

Census, Department of

Commerce

Automation is a new word for a now familiar process of expanding the types

of work in which machinery is used to do tasks faster, or better, or in greater

quantity.

7. D.J. Davis,

VP Manufacturing,

Ford Motor Co.

The automatic handling of parts between progressive production processes.

It is the result of better planning, improved tooling, and the application

of more efﬁcient manufacturing methods, which take full advantage of the

progress made by the machine-tool and equipment industries.

8. Don G. Mitchell, President,

Sylvania Electric Products,

Inc.

Automation is a more recent term for mechanization, which has been go-

ing on since the industrial revolution began. Automation comes in bits and

pieces. First the automation of a simple process, and then gradually a tying

together of several processes to get a group of subassembly complete.

bernetics overlaps with control theory and systems

theory.

Cyber

Cyber- is a preﬁx, as in cybernetic, cybernation, or cy-

borg. Recently, cyber has assumed a meaning as a noun,

meaning computers and information systems, virtual

reality, and the Internet. This meaning has emerged be-

cause of the increasing importance of these automation

systems to society and daily life.

Artiﬁcial Intelligence (AI)

Artiﬁcial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a machine

system to perceive anticipated or unanticipated new

Part A 3.1

Automation: What It Means to Us Around the World 3.1 The Meaning of Automation 21

Table 3.6 Automation domains

Domain Accounting Agriculture Banking ChemicalCommuni- Construction Design

process cation

Example Billing Harvester AT M Reﬁnery Print-press Truck CAD

software (automatic (computer-

teller machine) aided design)

Education Energy Engineering Factory Government Healthcare Home Hospital

Television Power Simulation AGV Government Body Toaster Drug delivery

windmill (automated web portals scanner

guided vehicle)

Hospitality Leisure Library Logistics Management Manu-Maritime Military

facturing

CRM Movie Database RFID Financial Assembly Navigation Intelligence

(customer (radio- analysis robot satellite

relations frequency software

management) identiﬁcation)

Ofﬁce Post Retail Safety Security Service Sports Transportation

Copying Mail sorter e-Commerce Fire alarm Motion Vending Tread mill Trafﬁc light

machine detector machine

Part A 3.1

22 Part A Development and Impacts of Automation

conditions, decide what actions must be performed

under these conditions, and plan the actions accord-

ingly. The main areas of AI study and application are

knowledge-based systems, computer sensory systems,

language processing systems, and machine learning. AI

is an important part of automation, especially to charac-

terize what is sometimes called intelligent automation

(Sect.3.4.2).

It is important to note that AI is actually human

intelligence that has been implemented on machines,

mainly through computers and communication. Its

signiﬁcant advantages are that it can function auto-

matically, i.e., without human intervention during its

operation/function; it can combine intelligence from

many humans, and improve its abilities by automatic

learning and adaptation; it can be automatically dis-

tributed, duplicated, shared, inherited, and if necessary,

restrained and even deleted. With the advent of these

abilities, remarkable progress has been achieved. There

is also, however, an increasing risk of running out of

control (Sect.3.6), which must be considered carefully

as with harnessing any other technology.

3.1.3 Early Automation

The creative human desire to develop automation, from

ancient times, has been to recreate natural activities,

either for enjoyment or for productivity with less hu-

man effort and hazard. It should be clear, however, that

the following six imperatives have been proven about

automation:

1. Automation has always been developed by people

2. Automation has been developed for the sake of

people

3. The beneﬁts of automation are tremendous

4. Often automation performs tasks that are impossible

or impractical for humans

5. As with other technologies, care should be taken to

prevent abuse of automation, and to eliminate the

possibilities of unsafe automation

6. Automation is usually inspiring further creativity of

the human mind.

The main evolvement of automation has followed

the development of mechanics and ﬂuidics, civil in-

frastructure and machine design, and since the 20th

century, of computers and communication. Examples

of ancient automation that follow the formal deﬁnition

(Table 3.1) include ﬂying and chirping birds, sun-

dial clocks, irrigation systems, and windmills. They

all include the four basic automation elements, and

have a clear autonomous process without human in-

tervention, although they are mostly predetermined or

predeﬁned in terms of their control program and or-

ganization. But not all these ancient examples replace

previously used human effort: Some of them would be

impractical or even impossible for humans, e.g., dis-

playing time, or moving large quantities of water by

aqueducts over large distances. This observation is im-

portant, since, as evident from the deﬁnition surveys

(Sect.3.5):

1. In deﬁning automation, over one-quarter of those

surveyed associate automation with replacing hu-

mans, hinting somber connotation that humans are

losing certain advantages. Many resources erro-

neously deﬁne automation as replacement of human

workers by technology. But the deﬁnition is not

about replacing humans, as many automation ex-

amples involve activities people cannot practically

perform, e.g., complex and fast computing, wireless

telecommunication, microelectronics manufactur-

ing, and satellite-based positioning. The deﬁnition

is about the autonomy of a system or process from

human involvement and intervention during the pro-

cess (independent ofwhether humans couldor could

not perform it themselves). Furthermore, automa-

tion is rarely disengaged from people, who must

maintain and improve it (or at least replace its

batteries).

2. Humans are always involved with automation, to

a certain degree, from its development, to, at cer-

tain points, supervising, maintaining, repairing, and

issuing necessary commands, e.g., at which ﬂoor

should this elevator stop for me?

Describing automation, Buckingham [3.3] quotes

Aristotle (384–322 BC): “When looms weave by them-

selves human’s slavery will end.” Indeed, the reliance

on a process that can proceed successfully to comple-

tion autonomously, without human participation and

intervention, is an essential characteristic of automa-

tion. But it took over 2000 years since Aristotle’s

prediction till the automatic loom was developed during

the Industrial Revolution.

3.1.4 Industrial Revolution

Some scientists (e.g., Truxal [3.4]) deﬁne automa-

tion as applying machines or systems to execute tasks

that involve more elaborate decision-making. Certain

decisions were already involved in ancient automa-

tion, e.g., where to direct the irrigation water. More

Part A 3.1

Automation: What It Means to Us Around the World 3.1 The Meaning of Automation 23

control sophistication was indeed developed later, be-

ginning during the Industrial Revolution (see examples

in Table 3.3).

During the Industrial Revolution, as shown in the

examples, steam and later electricity became the main

power sources of automation systems and machines,

and autonomy of process and decision-making increas-

ingly involved feedback control models.

3.1.5 Modern Automation

The term automation in its modern meaning was ac-

tually attributed in the early 1950s to D.S. Harder,

a vice-president of the Ford Motor Company, who de-

scribed it as a philosophy of manufacturing. Towards

the 1950s, it became clear that automation could be

viewed as substitution by mechanical, hydraulic, pneu-

matic, electric, and electronic devices for a combination

of human efforts and decisions. Critics with humor re-

ferred to automation as substitution of human error

by mechanical error. Automation can also be viewed

as the combination of four fundamental principles:

mechanization; process continuity; automatic control;

and economic, social, and technological rationaliza-

tion.

Mechanization

Mechanization is deﬁned as the application of ma-

chines to perform work. Machines can perform various

tasks, at different levels of complexity. When mecha-

nization is designedwith cognitiveand decision-making

functions, such as process control and automatic con-

trol, the modern term automation becomes appropriate.

Some machines can be rationalized by beneﬁts of

safety and convenience. Some machines, based on their

power, compactness, and speed, can accomplish tasks

that could never be performed by human labor, no

matter how much labor or how effectively the opera-

tion could be organized and managed. With increased

availability and sophistication of power sources and of

automatic control, the level of autonomy of machines

and mechanical system created a distinction between

mechanization and the more autonomousform of mech-

anization, which is automation (Sect.3.4).

Process Continuity

Process continuity is already evident in some of the

ancient automation examples, and more so in the In-

dustrial Revolution examples (Tables 3.1 and 3.3). For

instance, windmills could provide relatively uninter-

rupted cycles of grain milling. The idea of continuity

is to increase productivity, the useful output per labor-

hour. Early in the 20th century, with the advent of

mass production, it became possible to better orga-

nize workﬂow. Organization of production ﬂow and

assembly lines,and automatic or semiautomatictransfer

lines increased productivity beyond mere mechaniza-

tion. The emerging automobile industry in Europe and

the USA in the early 1900s utilized the concept of

moving work continuously, automatically or semiau-

tomatically, to specialized machines and workstations.

Interesting problemsthat emerged with ﬂow automation

included balancing the work allocation and regulating

the ﬂow.

Automatic Control

A key mechanism of automatic control is feedback,

which is the regulation of a process according to its own

output, so that the output meets the conditions of a pre-

determined, set objective. An example is the windmill

that can adjust the orientation of it blades by feedback

informing it of the changing direction of the current

wind. Another example is the heating system that can

stop and restart its heating or cooling process according

to feedback from its thermostat. Watt’s ﬂyball gover-

nor applied feedback from the position of the rotating

balls as a function of their rotating speed to automat-

ically regulate the speed of the steam engine. Charles

Babbage analytical engine for calculations applied the

feedback principle in 1840 (see more on the develop-

ment of automatic control in Chap.4).

Automation Rationalization

Rationalization means a logical and systematic analy-

sis, understanding, and evaluation of the objectives and

constraints of the automation solution. Automation is

rationalized by considering the technological and engi-

neering aspects in the context of economic, social, and

managerial considerations, including also: human fac-

tors and usability, organizational issues, environmental

constraints, conservation of resources and energy, and

elimination of waste (Chaps. 40 and 41).

Soon after automation enabled mass production in

factories of the early 20th century and workers feared

for the future of their jobs, the US Congress held hear-

ings in which experts explained what automation means

to them(Table 3.5).From our vantage point several gen-

erations later, it is interesting to read these deﬁnitions,

while we already know about automation discoveries

yet unknown at thattime, e.g., laptop computers, robots,

cellular telephones and personal digital assistants, the

Internet, and more.

Part A 3.1

24 Part A Development and Impacts of Automation

A relevant question is: Why automate? Several

prominent motivations are the following, as has been

indicated by the survey participants (Sect.3.5):

1. Feasibility: Humans cannot handle certain opera-

tions and processes, either because of their scale,

e.g., micro- and nanoparticles are too small, the

amount of data is too vast, or the process happens

too fast, for instance, missile guidance; micro-

electronics design, manufacturing and repair; and

database search.

2. Productivity: Beyond feasibility, computers, au-

tomatic transfer machines, and other equipment

can operate at such high speed and capacity

that it would be practically impossible without

automation, for instance, controlling consecutive,

rapid chemical processes in food production; per-

forming medicine tests by manipulating atoms or

molecules; optimizing a digital image; and placing

millions of colored dots on a color television (TV)

screen.

3. Safety: Automation sensors and devices can oper-

ate well in environments that are unsafe for humans,

for example, under extreme temperatures, nuclear

radiation, or in poisonous gas.

4. Quality and economy: Automation can save signif-

icant costs on jobs performed without it, including

consistency, accuracy, and quality of manufactured

products and of services, and saving labor, safety,

and maintenance costs.

5. Importance to individuals, to organizations, and to

society: Beyond the above motivations, service- and

knowledge-based automation reduces the need for

middle managers and middle agents, thus reducing

or eliminating the agency costs and removing layers

of bureaucracy, for instance, Internet-based travel

services and ﬁnancial services, and direct commu-

nication between manufacturing managers and line

operators, or cell robots. Remote supervision and

telecollaboration change the nature, sophistication,

skills and training requirements, and responsibility

of workers and their managers. As automation gains

intelligence and competencies, it takes over some

employment skills and opens up new types of work,

skills, and service requirements.

6. Accessibility: Automation enables better accessi-

bility for all people, including disadvantaged and

disabled people. Furthermore, automation opens up

new types of employment for people with limi-

tations, e.g., by integration of speech and vision

recognition interfaces.

7. Additional motivations: Additional motivations are

the competitive ability to integrate complex mech-

anization, advantages of modernization, conve-

nience, and improvement in quality of life.

To be automated, a system must follow the mo-

tivations listed above. The modern and emerging

automation examples in Table 3.4 and the automation

cases in Sect.3.3 illustrate these motivations, and the

mechanization, process continuity, and automatic con-

trol features.

Certain limits and risks of automation need also be

considered. Modern, computer-controlled automation

must be programmable and conform to deﬁnable pro-

cedures, protocols, routines, and boundaries. The limits

also follow the boundaries imposed by the four prin-

ciples of automation. Can it be mechanized? Is there

continuity in the process? Can automatic control be de-

signed for it? Can it be rationalized? Theoretically, all

continuous processes can be automatically controlled,

but practically such automation must be rationalized

ﬁrst; for instance, jet engines may be continuously

advanced on conveyors to assembly cells, but if the

demand for these engines is low, there is no justiﬁca-

tion to automate their ﬂow. Furthermore, all automation

must be designed to operate within safe boundaries,

so it does not pose hazards to humans and to the

environment.

3.1.6 Domains of Automation

Some unique meanings of automation are associated

with the domain of automation. Several examples of

well-known domains are listed here:

•

Detroit automation – Automation of transfer lines

and assembly lines adopted by the automotive in-

dustry [3.5].

•

Flexible automation – Manufacturing and service

automation consisting of a group of processing sta-

tions and robots operating as an integrated system

under computer control, able to process a variety

of different tasks simultaneously, under automatic,

adaptive control or learning control [3.5]. Also

known as ﬂexible manufacturing system (FMS),

ﬂexible assembly system, or robot cell, which

are suitable for medium demand volume and

medium variety of ﬂexible tasks. Its purpose is

to advance from mass production of products to

more customer-oriented and customized supply. For

higher ﬂexibility with low demand volume, stand-

Part A 3.1