Close your eyes for a moment. Think about manufacturing. What do you envision? Is it the noise of a factory floor as workers, glistening in sweat, muscle heavy machinery and raw materials into place? Or maybe it’s a line of blue-collar workers, working on an assembly line performing a mind-numbing series of repetitive tasks?

Open your eyes. Manufacturing has entered the 21st century.

Broad socio-technical and specific manufacturing long-term trends are now at work, shaping manufacturing in the 21st century. Of these, the most powerful is the long-term industrial trend toward realistic and substantial accomplishment of highly human-resources-oriented computer integration, automation and optimized operation of the overall manufacturing enterprise.

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