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VII. Answer the questions in the chart using the information from the text.

Koskinen (Department of Physiology, Institute of Occupational

б VIII*. Study the dataАobtained by P. Seppälä, E. Tuominen and P.

Health, Finland) in the 90s of the XX century. What conclusions can be drawn?

Д И

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FMS? Write them down (five as minimum) and give your arguments.

TEST YOURSELF

A Flexible Manufacturing System is the current level of automation in the field of manufacturing. The application of FMS requires 1) technical know-how.

A Flexible Manufacturing System may be defined as a system dealing with high level distributed data 2) ___ and automated material 3) ___

using computer-controlled machines, cells, industrial robots, inspection machines and so on, together with computer integrated materials 4) ___

and 5) ___ systems.

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Here manufacturing is considered to be a 6) ___ which integrates different 7) ___ and requires a properly defined 8) ___ to create the expected 9) ___.

called cells) of the manufacturing system.

An FMS can also be defined as a computer-controlled configuration of semi-independent work 14) ___ and a material handling 15) ___ de-

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II. Find the words in the text and translate the word combinations

with them. И

III. Work in pairs. Think of 2 or 3 questions using the words from Ex. I. Answer the questions of your partner. Study the prompts in italics

first.

What is flexibility characterized by?

By what means can product quality be improved? How can the equipment idle time be reduced?

Does the staff have to be highly skilled?

* Find sentences in the passive voice in the text below and translate them.

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IV. You are going to read about flexible manufacturing. Find the answers to the following questions while reading:

significant departure from conventional manufacturing methods. An FMS

is a production facility consisting of flexible machines or work stations connected by an automated material handling system, all under the control of one or more computers.

computing machinesбhas made it possible to introduce a wide-scale automation of all branches of industry which gave rise to independent development of automation Аprocesses:

The FMS technology has a relatively brief history. The progress of

(a) Automated Data Processing (the appearance of Automated Control Systems and Computer-Aided Designing (CAD));

(b) Automation of Production Technology (the appearance of Nu- merically-Controlled Equipment, Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) and Industrial Robots).

tomated lines and shops and at last Дautomated factories provided with flexible technology and computer-based artificial intelligence.

The development of FMSs began with the appearance of industrial robots, processing centres, microcomputers, computer-aided designing, etc. followed by the introduction of robotized complexes, flexible modules, au-

It seems almost certain that the main reasons for designing and implementing an FMS are the economic benefits of the system. They include first of all greater productivity which means a greater output and a lower unit cost on a smaller floor space.

И

It is possible to say that the FMS is the system where the time spent on the machine can be as high as 90% and the time spent on cutting can again be over 90%. Compare this to standalone numerically-controlled machines (NC), where the part from stock to finished item spends only 5% of its productive time on the machine tool.

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