Microfactory
A Cutting Edge toward Eco-Manufacturing in 21st Century
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Today,
mechanical manufacturing faces tough challenges such as environmental
issues, agile and flexible manufacturing, saving expenses, as well as
technological evolutions, for competency in borderless business. While
machined parts are getting smaller and smaller, machine tools in use are
still in conventional size, lacking reasonableness. Downsizing of
manufacturing systems can leads to smart solutions, improving space
utilization factor, reducing the price and energy consumption, including
environmental conditioning such as temperature, humidity and cleanliness,
as well as facility investment. The agility in reconfiguring the
manufacturing lines in the factories will be elevated. Furthermore, the
machines can be placed off the factory floor, to the design offices or
classrooms, and distributed to small manufacturing laboratories, even in
residential areas. A
micromachine research group in the former Mechanical Engineering
Laboratory (MEL) has proposed a concept of the microfactory in 1990 and
estimated the effect of miniaturization of production systems. The
estimation found that in the case of a 1/10 size-reduction of production
machines, the total energy consumption in the factory decreases to
approximately 1/100 of that of a conventional factory.
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