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The manufacturing process is carried out by a range of machinery that, together with its concomitant software, comes under the collective heading of computer–aided manufacturing (CAM).
Maximum elements of CAM are computer numerical control (CNC) and robotics. CNC machines are programmable machine tools. These are capable of performing a number of machining tasks, e.g. cutting, grinding, moulding, bending etc.
A program stores all the existing manufacturing activities and set-up instructions for a particular machine or bank of machines, providing facility of changing its configuration in a are easily accommodated. CNC therefore offers great flexibility, and reduces set-up times. Human operators will tire and are error prone. CNC machines are able to repeat the same operation continuously in identical manner, with high accuracy level.
For Example the car producer, found that the time taken to completely retool car body panel jigs in their intelligent body assembly system (IBAS) fell from 12 months to less than 3 months by reprogramming the process machinery by computer and using computerised jig robots.
