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Electronics Control A.E.C. Production

5th July 1957, Page 53
5th July 1957
Page 53
Page 53, 5th July 1957 — Electronics Control A.E.C. Production
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WHAT is, so far as is known, the first installation of its kind in the country to be performing a full routine on production control, has been introduced by A.E.C., Ltd., Southall. Whilst it will be experimental for a period, a working procedure has been devised and partially implemented.

These facts were revealed by Mr. W. J. Kease, in his paper, "ComputerAssisted Production Control," which was presented before the Institution of Production Engineers at a conference in Harrogate on Monday. Mr. Kease is technical assistant (directors' office) to A.E..C.

In the British heavy-vehicle industry generally, he said, production control was a mixture of the serialized and order varieties. There were few manufacturers who constructed over 40 I 2-ton vehicles or their equivalent each week, and fewer still who made over 60. These levels of output hardly lent themselves to wholly serial processing methods, particularly if the range of products was wide.

Mr. Kease said that whilst the A.E.C. production-control procedure might appear straightforward, it was carried out for every part number on vehicles contained in 24 main groups, comprising a possible—though not probable-270 vehicle types and 30,000 different pieces.

Requirements of a production-contiol procedure had been reviewed to determine the measures needed to transform the conclusions arrived at into an effective control technique. Initial investigation revealed insensitivity in a system which had tended to become cumbersome, slow and ill defined, leading to local inaccuracies in the master records.

Further investigation suggested that an important requirement, and possibly an easy one to satisfy, was to speed up the office arithmetic on which procedures were founded. Some form of machine seemed indicated, as it appeared that efficiency and speed could not be achieved fully by the use of an increased number of clerks.

The electronic data-processing section in its final shape comprised 15 machines, three of which, when linked together, formed a digital computer working from punched cards. The other 12 machines in the section consisted of three card punches, three card verifiers, two sorters, one collator, one interpreter and two reproducers..

The speed of the computer was millisecond for addition, 11 milliseconds for multiplication, 13 milliseconds for division and 48 milliseconds for transfer. Preparation for the introduction of the new procedure was being spread over three years, of which two had already passed.

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