Manufacturing engineering

Manufacturing engineering or production engineering is a branch of professional engineering that shares many common concepts and ideas with other fields of engineering such as mechanical, chemical, electrical, and industrial engineering.
Manufacturing engineering requires the ability to plan the practices of manufacturing; to research and to develop tools, processes, machines and equipment; and to integrate the facilities and systems for producing quality products with the optimum expenditure of capital.

The manufacturing or production engineer's primary focus is to turn raw material into an updated or new product in the most effective, efficient & economic way possible. An example would be a company uses computer integrated technology in order for them to produce their product so that it is faster and uses less human labor.

Overview

Manufacturing Engineering is based on core industrial engineering and mechanical engineering skills, adding important elements from mechatronics, commerce, economics and business management.
This field also deals with the integration of different facilities and systems for producing quality products (with optimal expenditure) by applying the principles of physics and the results of manufacturing systems studies, such as the following:

* Craft
* Putting-out system
* British factory system
* American system of manufacturing
* Mass production
* Computer integrated manufacturing
* Computer-aided technologies in manufacturing
* Just in time manufacturing
* Lean manufacturing
* Flexible manufacturing
* Mass customization
* Agile manufacturing
* Rapid manufacturing
* Prefabrication
* Ownership
* Fabrication
* Publication

Manufacturing engineers develop and create physical artifacts, production processes, and technology. It is a very broad area which includes the design and development of products. Manufacturing engineering is considered to be a subdiscipline of industrial engineering/ systems engineering and has very strong overlaps with mechanical engineering. Manufacturing engineers' success or failure directly impacts the advancement of technology and the spread of innovation. This field of manufacturing engineering emerged from tool and die discipline in the early 20th century. It expanded greatly from the 1960s when industrialized countries introduced factories with:

1. Numerical control machine tools and automated systems of production.

2. Advanced statistical methods of quality control: These factories were pioneered by the American electrical engineer William Edwards Deming, who was initially ignored by his home country. The same methods of quality control later turned Japanese factories into world leaders in cost-effectiveness and production quality.

3. Industrial robots on the factory floor, introduced in the late 1970s: These computer-controlled welding arms and grippers could perform simple tasks such as attaching a car door quickly and flawlessly 24 hours a day. This cut costs and improved production speed.

History

The history of manufacturing engineering can be traced to factories in the mid 19th century USA and 18th century UK. Although large home production sites and workshops were established in China, ancient Rome and the Middle East, the Venice Arsenal provides one of the first examples of a factory in the modern sense of the word. Founded in 1104 in the Republic of Venice several hundred years before the Industrial Revolution, this factory mass-produced ships on assembly lines using manufactured parts. The Venice Arsenal apparently produced nearly one ship every day and, at its height, employed 16,000 people.

Many historians regard Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory (established in 1761 in Birmingham) as the first modern factory. Similar claims can be made for John Lombe's silk mill in Derby (1721), or Richard Arkwright's Cromford Mill (1771). The Cromford Mill was purpose-built to accommodate the equipment it held and to take the material through the various manufacturing processes. One historian, Jack Weatherford, contends that the first factory was in Potosí. The Potosi factory took advantage of the abundant silver that was mined nearby and processed silver ingot slugs into coins.

British colonies in the 19th century built factories simply as buildings where a large number of workers gathered to perform hand labor, usually in textile production. This proved more efficient for the administration and distribution of materials to individual workers than earlier methods of manufacturing, such as cottage industries or the putting-out system.

Cotton mills used inventions such as the steam engine and the power loom to pioneer the industrial factories of the 19th century, where precision machine tools and replaceable parts allowed greater efficiency and less waste. This experience formed the basis for the later studies of manufacturing engineering. Between 1820 and 1850, non-mechanized factories supplanted traditional artisan shops as the predominant form of manufacturing institution.

Henry Ford further revolutionized the factory concept and thus manufacturing engineering in the early 20th century with the innovation of mass production. Highly specialized workers situated alongside a series of rolling ramps would build up a product such as (in Ford's case) an automobile. This concept dramatically decreased production costs for virtually all manufactured goods and brought about the age of consumerism.

Modern developments

Modern manufacturing engineering studies include all intermediate processes required for the production and integration of a product's components.

Some industries, such as semiconductor and steel manufacturers use the term "fabrication" for these processes.

Automation is used in different processes of manufacturing such as machining and welding. Automated manufacturing refers to the application of automation to produce goods in a factory. The main advantages of automated manufacturing for the manufacturing process are realized with effective implementation of automation and include: higher consistency and quality, reduction of lead times, simplification of production, reduced handling, improved work flow, and improved worker morale.

Robotics is the application of mechatronics and automation to create robots, which are often used in manufacturing to perform tasks that are dangerous, unpleasant, or repetitive. These robots may be of any shape and size, but all are preprogrammed and interact physically with the world. To create a robot, an engineer typically employs kinematics (to determine the robot's range of motion) and mechanics (to determine the stresses within the robot). Robots are used extensively in manufacturing engineering.

Robots allow businesses to save money on labor, perform tasks that are either too dangerous or too precise for humans to perform economically, and to ensure better quality. Many companies employ assembly lines of robots, and some factories are so robotized that they can run by themselves. Outside the factory, robots have been employed in bomb disposal, space exploration, and many other fields. Robots are also sold for various residential applications.

Education

Manufacturing Engineers

Manufacturing Engineers focus on the design, development and operation of integrated systems of production to obtain high quality & economically competitive products. These systems may include material handling equipment, machine tools, robots or even computers or networks of computers.

Certification Programs

Manufacturing engineers possess an associate's or bachelor's degree in engineering with a major in manufacturing engineering. The length of study for such a degree is usually two to five years followed by five more years of professional practice to qualify as a professional engineer. Working as a manufacturing engineering technologist involves a more applications-oriented qualification path.

Academic degrees for manufacturing engineers are usually the Associate or Bachelor of Engineering, Eor Eng and the Associate or Bachelor of Science, Sor Sc For manufacturing technologists the required degrees are Associate or Bachelor of Technology .TECHor Associate or Bachelor of Applied Science AScin Manufacturing, depending upon the university. Master's degrees in engineering manufacturing include Master of Engineering Eor Engin Manufacturing, Master of Science .Scin Manufacturing Management, Master of Science .Scin Industrial and Production Management, and Master of Science .Scas well as Master of Engineering Ein Design, which is a subdiscipline of manufacturing. Doctoral hDor Englevel courses in manufacturing are also available depending on the university.

The undergraduate degree curriculum generally includes courses in physics, mathematics, computer science, project management, and specific topics in mechanical and manufacturing engineering. Initially such topics cover most, if not all, of the subdisciplines of manufacturing engineering. Students then choose to specialize in one or more subdisciplines towards the end of their degree work.

Syllabus

The Foundational Curriculum for a Bachelor's Degree of Manufacturing Engineering or Production Engineering includes below mentioned syllabus. This syllabus is closely related to Industr