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MARCH 2019 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 39 Automation is a strategic tool for controlling, managing, and directing a productive process by automatic means. It is usually complemented by product and technological innovations. As an engineering discipline, automation can be accu- rately planned and is mostly arithmetic, not pro- paganda. The chief ingredients in automation are adequate know-how and common sense. There are numerous business and global fac- tors behind the automation movement, but these are four that we're primarily concerned with: 1. Global competitive pressures 2. Growing complexity of product and working situations 3. Changing skill availability and job expectations 4. Technology availability and its costs What has not been clear to management is that automation is mainly an approach to a company's future business strategy. Manage- ment's response to automation has usually been fragmented and reactive with numer- ous requests for new machinery, such as us- ing more computers, and new processes and procedures. As a result, overlapping and exces- sive investment requests accompanied by ad- ditional staff too often of lead to inefficient or incompatible fabrication systems. It is the role of integrated process planning, control, and monitoring as part of system man- agement (Figure 5) to create the coordination of the CIM software architecture for manufacturing. The biggest challenge is the complete digitization of the product. As seen in Figure 6, the CAD sys- tems must deliver more than just preliminary art- work and CNC files, but rather a complete recipe Figure 5: The automation software for manufacturing will be the same whether it is a CIM strategy or smart factory strategy.