Two companies´ views on machine tool design

What are the consequences of a machine tool that was designed and built to run for eight hours being made to operate for possibly 21 hours a day? And with more and more, automation and unmanned machining being adopted in our factories (and pushed at Mach 84), is it not time that we reconsidered the design of our machine tools? In this, the first of two articles, Harry Challis gives two companies the opportunity to air their views on machine tool design relating to FMS and the like. Next month, he looks in more detail at this increasingly topical problem.