Basic Manufacturing Process - Ch 9.1




Q.1 What is manufacturing? What is the importance of manufacturing. (AKTU. 2008-09)
Ans. Manufacturing basically implies making of goods or articles and providing services to meet the human needs. It creates value by useful application of physical and mental labour in the process. This, however, is too inadequate a definition to give a clear picture of the vast domain of manufacturing which is much more complex and broad based than what appears from this definition.
For the sake of slight elaboration it would, probably, be more appropriate to conceive manufacturing as a chain of interrelated activities and operations, such as order processing, design, drawing, selection of materials, process planning, production, production control, quality control, management, marketing, etc. which, when carried out in a systemic and sequential manner with proper coordination and effective control, will lead to the economic production and effective marketing of required articles.
It is, therefore, evident that manufacturing today is not a one man activity as it was in  the initial stages, wherein all the physical and mental inputs were provided by a single workman. Today it is a team work; which consists of several components interacting together in a dynamic manner to provide the required physical and mental inputs at appropriate stages to give the desired results. This entire domain of manufacturing is known as Manufacturing system, which takes the required inputs and delivers the products for the customer.
An important aspect of manufacturing is after sales service and maintaining a product during its useful life. The production system can be considered to be the fore runner of techno-socio-economic development.
The production process is a complex activity which involves people of different areas and skills and a wide variety of machinery, equipment, tools, with various levels of automation, robots and modern material handling equipments. Economic viability of a product is a very important consideration of any manufacturing system. Manufacturing quality product according to given specifications and to fullfill service requirement is only one aspect of a production system.
Development of new materials and their usage will ultimately affect everybody, not just those in industry, business organization or academics. In the present sceriario, when science, technology and society are all rapidly advancing, focus should be concentrated on how materials science affects society but also the ways in which society affects the developments made in material science. Materials is one of the chief inputs to manufacturing. Manufacturing a quality product at lower market prices requires an understanding of potential factors like product design and development, selection of materials and kind of manufacturing process, etc. But achieving all this is a major challenge to the manufactures. In order to face these challenges, creative and innovative approaches to design and manufacturing is must.

Q.2 Discuss the role and importance of materials and manufacturing for the growth of any nation.                                                                                         (AKTU. 2008-09)
Ans. Manufacturing processes forms the fundamental subject of mechanical engineering and some other disciplines as well with the changing environment and the advancement in the subject manufacturing processes. It is essential to study it with more practical approach. A detail study of manufacturing process is absolutely necessary for every engineer. This helps him to scope up with the problem in manufacturing for various products like plant machinery for chemical, electrical, textile etc. this subject plays vital role.
Every manufacturing system is directly or indirectly related with economy of the country. The modern and advanced techniques and the optimum utilization of machinery, powers labour in any manufacturing process leads to economy. The economy consideration is one of the one important aspects of manufacturing, with the economy of the product its functional and asthetical side should be acceptable all levels.
Now a days new techniques computer aided design/manufacturing playing a great role in production processes. The newly developed materials demands for an improved technique. The CAD/CAM are applied quite effectively to robotics, new alloys, aerospace etc. All the processes in manufacturing have their advantage and limitations to understand the manufacturing system in better way. It is divided into 3 essential parts as shown in figure.





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