From Filing and Fitting to Flexible Manufacturing: A Study in the Evolution of Process Control

A well-known but previously unpublished monograph by Ramchandran Jaikumar (1945–1998) on the nature and history of manufacturing. The development of mass manufacturing ranks as one of the most important contributions to human living conditions ever – of the same magnitude as agriculture and modern medicine. This monograph examines the development of manufacturing over several centuries, through the eyes of a single industry and company. Throughout this period, the key has been precise control of manufacturing processes, rather than production speed per se. There have been six revolutionary transformations in manufacturing, each involving a shift in hard technology, the nature of human work, and the nature of process control. Each epochal change was a step in the evolution of manufacturing from art to science. Each required a different ethos of process control and forced a new system of manufacture. Machines, the nature of work, and the nature of the organization all had to change in concert.