Trend Toward Standardization and Automation in Manufacturing

The design of electronic products has been revolutionized, in recent years, by the introduction of various "state-of-the-art" concepts and technology changes. This continually accelerating trend of technical innovation has, perhaps, had a tendency to cloud the significance and relative importance of some of the fundamental concepts involved in the expression "producibility of design." "Producibility," specifically with respect to the cost connotations implied, is necessarily associated with standardization of materials, components, and operations which, in turn, become the basis for extended mechanization and automation of the operations. A corollary to this process is the necessity for improved data management at the design-manufacturing interface and, in a sense, the standardization and automation of the data and data handling techniques involved.