Alloys in Manufacturing

Chapter 1

1. Introduction

3

Introductory Chapter: Mass

Production and Industry 4.0

When it comes to the history of mass production enterprises, the revolutionary developments in mass production come to mind from the past to the present. To be able to better adapt to today's industrial revolution, of course it is necessary to understand the past industrial revolutions. On the basis of industrial revolutions, each of which is more or less rooted in a technological and cultural basis, there was always an effort to achieve better and faster solutions. Of course, economic concerns have always been taken into consideration. Industry 4.0 is a target of the research policy of the German government. Today, in the focus of integrated mass production, systems benefit from the advantages of this novel industrial revolution. Since it is a great way to meet the large-scale demand of most products, mass production is used in many industries which are big and/or small. For instance, automobiles, computers, and cellular phones are the typical examples of mass production products. A high demand rate for a product is the main specification of mass production. The manufacturing area is typically dedicated to the production of

Typical or conventional manufacturing methods can be adapted as mass production lines which are machining, casting, joining, and forming or plastic deformation. Each of them has its principles, manufacturing parameters, application areas, methods, and technologies to be considered in detail. It is always hard to set manufacturing systems to produce large quantities of standardized parts. Controlling these mass production lines needs deep knowledge and hard experience and the required related tools as well. The use of modern methods and techniques to produce large quantity products within productive manufacturing processes provides improvements in manufacturing costs and product quality. In order to serve these purposes, many works aim to reflect advanced manufacturing systems of different alloys in production with related components and automation technologies. Additionally, there are many works that focus on mass production processes designed according to Industry 4.0 considering different kinds of advanced quality and improvement research in mass production systems for high productive and sustainable manufacturing [1, 2]. This chapter gives general information about the components of a conventional mass production system and an Industrial 4.0-adapted mass production system with their individual advantages.

2. Components of a conventional mass production system

Conventional mass production processes may be also called as continuous production that involves the fabrication of a known part in a specific production way and shape, in a consistent manner. In the mass production area, there are typical

Anil Akdogan and Ali Serdar Vanli

a single type product and/or its variations.
