Introduction

Abstract

Manufacturing has been represented over time by a number of different technique. The initial craftsman technique involved tailoring production to individual customer needs. The craftsman technique was succeeded by the remarkable innovation of the mass production technique, in which a small set of products could be made in large volumes. This, in turn, led to batch production for smaller volumes and varied products. But a number of industries were dissatisfied with the results of their contemporary production management and were looking for other methods that would enable them to increase production efficiency, particularly the metal-cutting manufacturing industries; it is an amazing fact that two different methods, group technology and numerical control , were proposed in two different parts of the world at around the same time (circa the 1950s) with the same objective, i.e., reducing throughput time . These methods are discussed in this chapter.