Examen

What is manufacturing?

As you read this introduction, take a few moments to inspect the different objects around you your watch, chair, stapler, pencil, calculator, telephone and light fixtures. You will soon realize that all these objects have been transformed from various materias primas and assembled into the objects that you now see before you.
Some objects, such as nails clavos, boltspernos and paper clips, are made of one materials, However.
Most objects aircraft engines, ballpoint pens boligrafos, toaster, bicycles, computers and thousand more are made of several parts from a variety of materials. A typical automobile, for example, consists of about 15,000 parts, a C-5A transport plane consists of more than 4 millions parts, and a boeing 747-400 has 6 million parts. All aremade by various processes that we call manufacturing. Manufacturing fabricacion in its broadest sentido mas amplio sense, is the process of converting raw material into products. It encompasses abarca the design and manufacturing of goods using various production methods and techniques.

Manufacturing began about 5000 to 4000 B.C. with the production of various articles of wood, ceramic, stoneand metal. The word manufacturing is derived from the latin manufactus, meaning made by hand. The word manufacture first appeared in 1567 and the word manufacturing in 1683. Modern manufacturing involves making products from raw material by various processes, machinery and operations following a well organized plan for each step.

Manufacturing comprises approximately 20 to 30 percent of the valueof all goods and services produced in industrialized nations. Generally, the higher the level of manufacturing in a country, the higher the standard of a living of its people. Manufactured products are also used to make other products, examples are large presses to form sheet metal for car bodies, metalworking machinery used to make parts for other products, and sewing machines for makingclothing.

Because a manufactured item has under gone a number of changes in which raw materials has become a useful product. It has added value, defined as monetary work in terms of price. For example, clay has a certain value when mined when the clay is used to make a ceramic dinner plate, cutting tool, or electrical insulator, value is added to the clay. Similarly a wire coat hanger or a nails hasadded value over and above the cost of a piece of wire.
Manufacturing may produce discrete products, meaning individual parts or part pieces or continuous products. Nails, gears, steel balls, beverage cans and engine blocks are example of discrete products. Wire metal or plastics sheet, hose and pipe are continuous products that may be cut into individual pieces and thus become discrete products.Manufacturing is generally a complex activity involving people who have a broad range of disciplines and skills together with a wide variety of machinery, equipment and tools with various levels of automation, including computers, robots and material handling equipment. Manufacturing activities must be responsive demands and trends.

• A product most fully meet design requirements andspecifications.
• A product must be manufactured by the most economical methods in order to minimize costs.
• Quality must be built (build) into the products at each stage, from design to assembly, rather than relying on quality testing after the products is made.
• In a highly competitive environment, production methods must be sufficiently flexible to respond to changing marketdemands, types of products, production rates, production quantities and on-time delivery to the customer.
• New developments in materials, production methods and computer integration of both technological and managerial activities in a manufacturing organization must constantly be evaluated with a view to their timely and economic implementation.
• Manufacturing activities must be viewed as a...