Look, No Hands

Brave new world at the factory

The scene was like an eerie science fiction movie. At midnight in Nagoya, Japan, the new plant of the Yamazaki Machinery Works was deserted. The cavernous, corrugated-metal building was shrouded in darkness. The only worker in the plant was a night watchman, who patrolled the factory with a flashlight. Nonetheless, the Yamazaki Machinery Works was running at full speed, rilling the night with screeches and clangs as eight-ton metal castings were milled and moved throughout the plant, untouched by human hands.

In actuality, neither Darth Vader nor Dr. Strangelove had started his own company. The nocturnal scene was merely a routine operation at the $18 million flexible manufacturing lab that Yamazaki, Japan's largest maker of machine tools, put into production last week. The computer-controlled plant is the closest thing yet to the peopleless factory that futurologists predict will some day be the brave new world of manufacturing.

The plant produces precision components, including columns and bases for lathes and other metalworking implements. To produce its monthly output of 1,400 such parts, older plants that the company runs would have required more than 200 skilled workmen laboring at 68 different pieces of equipment.

There are just 18 machining centers, operating under computer control, at the Yamazaki plant. Human workers are now needed only at the very beginning of the production process. They use cranes to load metal castings onto fixtures which are wheeled into a storage area by a yellow trolley. When the electronic factory is ready for the casting, the metal is automatically rolled from there over to the proper machining center, which selects the right tool from a large drum of some 40 accessories and begins to customize the casting according to computerized blueprints. If a drill bit should suddenly snap in two, the machine senses the problem, selects another one to replace it and finishes the job. Castings proceed automatically to other machines, and emerge as finished parts in three days, on average, compared with the three months typically required in traditional metalworking shops, where time-consuming setup and alignment are required for each different drilling, milling and grinding operation.

Yamazaki's management is enthusiastic about its new factory, which will operate around the clock, seven days a week, all year long. Says President Teruhiko Yamazaki: "The accuracy is better than humans can do, and the machines never have a blue Monday." To keep the equipment as precisely tuned as possible, workers help re-sharpen each machining center's drum of accessory tools every six or seven days. Such tasks, and programming the factory's computers, are all that the plant now requires of employees. There are normally ten to twelve workers in the plant during the day, but just one watchman for the night shift. Employees are pleased about the new machines, convinced they will bring additional growth to Yamazaki (current worldwide sales: $300 million). Although the automated factory meant intracompany transfers for some workers, none were laid off. Through productivity savings, Yamazaki expects to recover the factory's $18 million investment in two years.

The new plant has been visited by a group of American businessmen, including C. Jackson Grayson, chairman of the American Productivity Center. Says Grayson: "On the outside it looks like any other plant, but you are stunned by the absence of people." The factory offers one consolation to Americans fearful that the Japanese are outstripping the U.S. in technological achievement. The computer that runs the plant is a PDP-11, made by the Digital Equipment Corp. of Maynard, Mass.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.