Do Not Fold; 4
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- Transcript
Do not then staple or mutilate this car. The slogan of the computer a University of Illinois radio service presents a series of programs about you and the computer from banks to hospitals and from airlines to music. It's application in this team and these programs will give you a glimpse of these countless applications and what they mean to you. Do not fold steps into the world of industry and the giant machines that run the economy of the world. As man designs and builds products for the nation's economy factories spring up overnight thousands of employees travel to these centers of industry to produce everything from bubble gum to steel beams at these plants. Computers are playing an increasing role. This might be the sound of a cake being mixed by a computer. At the Sara Lee
bakery in Deerfield Illinois like computers control the production of cakes from start to finish. Computers prepare mouthwatering cheese cakes brownies or Danish cakes dinner rolls. Layer cakes and even an entire dinner is for institutions and gradients are stored in large tanks and piped into giant mixers. Computers open and close valves that puir eggs flour milk and other ingredients into the mix. Each item in these gargantuan recipes is measured as it flows through the lines raw ingredients are measured by weight and liquid ones by pump pulses at the proper time each step is taken and mixing the cake and men on the floor receive instructions from the computer about any additional ingredients. The baking temperature of the ovens is monitored by analogue computer and after the proper amount of time the cake is sent on down the assembly line. Next the cake is frozen at minus 40 degrees and loaded for storage. MARTIN general manager of computer services explains
how the computer directs the formation of pallets or stacks of frozen goods in the storage area. First of all course we make one product at a time on any given mine. Now we have multiple line drawings so you make many products at the same time. Now when we palletized the computer knows from the production schedule what it be made in any given line. So at a time when the cake is palletized. That is the full pelt is formed. If the pellet moves into the system the computer then immediately code within its memory at that conveyor point where we have a map if you will use the analogy internally on the conveyor system. It will you will post a code of that product which each particular code associated with it into memory in a new course. Track this part as it moves into the system. Now we have a verification point inside the freezer. We have a further electric eye which actually reads hash mark type codes which are on all of the
cartons. This dentist said directly back to the computer in a computer it uses it as a verification tracking it knows where it should be chocolate cake and reader expects a diary if it is there of course a computer will pass that chocolate cake and assign it to a crane for storage should not be chopped a cake on the reader. Then of course there are the computer alarm this fact and the typewriter and the man in the control room will verify the product and input to the computer the proper cold. Such a system is called process control because the computer actually directs the process of baking and storing goods mechanisms are directly manipulated by the computer to produce the cakes rolls and other foods made it solely. But why automate such equipment by computer. Why not have men on the floor control the baking. Mr. JENNER Wald who suggests these advantages. Of course we expected to to maintain a very rigid quality control on our
product which is of course essential certainly. We did get that we are getting some of the things that we didn't expect which are pleasant as the upgrading of the equipment. This equipment runs very very at a very high rate of fissioning much more so than other automated equipment would because of demands put on it by the computer itself. The computer noting inefficiencies and of course by comparison. Another reason it runs at such a high rate of efficiency is the people around it. As a result of the computer it put demands on the people as well to perform. That is the meat and people the engineering staff. It's generally upgraded them so their performance of course is improved which really would amount to the general overall efficiency increase that was really unexpected but very pleasant to have experienced. Well considering the fact that we are sell quality will sell price when we sell quality and we do guarantee the
consumer that if you like their cake today you'll like it tomorrow because it will be the same kick. The products of the plastic age are more readily available because of the computer and its ability to calculate. At the US I plan in Tuscola Illinois natural gas is up tame from a nearby pipeline running through the Midwest through the use of various ranges of heat and catalysts. This gas is broken down into a variety of chemicals including propane butane natural gasoline polyethylene ammonia and nitric acid. Us I must determine how efficiently it is producing these elements and whether they meet certain standards. Basic production data is fed into the computer and results are calculated which indicate the relative success of the production at us I. Frank Kettler manager of technical and production economics at us I outlines this process analysis.
We make material balances on a daily basis to give an indication of. The production efficiencies wrong. You see each. On each of our production units. And this is used as a guide. To the operating people. So they command their units for we're measuring No not a lot of gas streams in measuring of gas. There are. Has to be taken consideration the density the composition and the super progressive melting and these require quite a little bit of calculations. And so in making a material bounce we take all. Considerations into account. To try and get the best balance that we can on our units. This chemical analysis has always been an essential part of the business but was a tedious process. It was done manually. As an example was on our ethylene unit we make quite a thorough analysis on it. It used to take a
man essentially about six hours a day to do this by hand. And with a computer why we end up doing is about a half an hour. That's from data collection to the final product. Not only the chemical analysis of outgoing products has been aided by the installation of computers at us. Now plant engineers can more quickly determine new levels of production and new chemical combinations. All engineers of course like to do the transfer calculations and. So we use the computer for various types of heat transfer calculations. We use it for. Will override the. Applications one of our best applications come in the PSL area of public service which area. They do an awful lot of. Specific and special analysis. And involved in that or some detail calculations. They were spending no. About. Half an hour per sample to do their analysis. We were running all those samples
they turned out in a weeks time in about 15 minutes 10 or 15 minutes. So this is meant to great aid to them. In addition. We're doing it more rigorous than they had previously done by hand. This is the one major area. And using computers is that you can go as rigorous as you desire. To get. The best results in an essentially no additional time. Still sometimes men do the job just as well as computers at one time US I considered a computer analysis of a feed mix. The computer would calculate the ingredients mixed in this meat and give a report of the cheapest and most nutritious makes they could be prepared. Arrangements were made to put this problem into the nearby computer so the name of the superintendent over there came over and we spent a day. And he had worked out some mixes. Prior to arriving. And so we put this through linear program. Would you believe he was exactly right the way he is doing and he
is one of these old time rule of thumb. Thanks. Mane. And he was absolutely correct so we abandoned further pursuit in that application area in your program. Many nationally known Gasolines are also produced with the aid of a computer at some plants a computer monitors the instruments indicating pressure and heat and relative content of each grade of gasoline. It's going to vary from the desired standard the computer activates mechanism that make adjustments or inform a man on the floor that such adjustments are needed at the Standard Oil Field in Poso Creek northwest of Bakersfield California. Heavy crude oil is cleaned and measured and shipped under computer control. Standard Oil is computer seven miles away so likes a pipe from one of the many oil wells at Bozo creek and starts the flow of fresh oil. It monitors the flow of each well and sends
no flow alarms to the central office. The computer also prepares an inventory of oil shipped from this field. Standard Oil uses its computers to explore other geological formations which might contain oil to simulate production in the field and to design new refineries pipelines transportation systems and marketing techniques. Thanks. A local General Electric plant in Danville Illinois utilizes computers in its production of ballast or Transformers for fluorescent lights. We asked Robert alley senior development engineer solve its engineering headaches on the computer. Well basically we do use three different types of. Computers. One is an
analog A second is a shared time which is digital and the third is a central processor type digital facility. That we have here in the plant. The analog computer which is a little bit different from what is frequently employed these days. We utilize for. Wave shaping we're constructing very special filters where we want to do it. For one particular experimental purpose. Or for perhaps simulating some type of electrical network where we wish to go through a wider range of parameters and is conveniently done using physical components. The shared time digital computer is utilized in engineering in two different ways. One is by the secretary to. Compute or to calculate run of the mill type things that are done every day and the second
purpose. For second you so this shared time facility is by the individual engineers themselves where they. Do seldom use calculations or perhaps. Just wish to calculate to a range of values to find out where they should operate once and for all. Then the third type of facility the central processor digital computer is utilized for the problems which are too large to be put on a shared time by using these different computer facilities the Jeep plant is able to analyze the details of balance construction. Mr. Elie can quickly determine that there will not be excessive ballast noise or heat and that the cost will be as low as possible. You can predict with the ballast will operate at high efficiency within the tolerances specified. In addition Mr. alley finds a special computer file useful in his daily design work when one of us in the department either generates a report or
finds an interesting article in a magazine. We simply put it in the normal manila folder on which one side is printed a number of blanks. Here we describe a serial number a title and all sorts of key words police key words are then key punched on to cards sorted in various ways and then Mr. Carson prints up an index of all our technical literature this way and by using this technique we are finally able to locate in a very short period of time the information if we have it that is usable in a project. And this gets used by. Individual engineers. About three to four times a day. So it has been a very. Useful technique in getting our filing system in use it just doesn't sit there and depend on someone's memory.
If a balance does fail despite all the calculations by engineers then it's up to ged to find out why. Hopefully failures will be found in-house before they're shipped to the customer. Bill Carson manager of information systems and data processing at the Danville plant explains how this is done. We have various test ations at various places along the line. And at certain stage manufacturers test to make sure that really Leftwich Opata properties are correct. He. Has put together right. And do the job it's supposed to do. And when it fails to these various test it's yanked off the line goes to repair operation if it is repairable. Or if it. Is moves and scrap. And. But we keep. Tabs we get reporting from the floor. How many of them rot. And what attestation. For right reason. Are these various units being pulled off. And that's where we get a.
Handle on. On our manufacturing processes now. Again that work could be a manufacturing process problem it could be a design problem. Could be almost any number of things. And this is why we have classed these things by. I think the last count I recall we had something like 50 different reasons a ballast me fail a test on the line. And again we have complete statistics on this. And. We compute. All the average failure rates and. This type of thing and run. Some statistical analysis for quality control people so they can. Set up a. Bus with better testing routines. And to. In effect keep the product quality up. Another part of this industry that has been assigned to a computer is the order entry system. When a customer decides that he wants to place an order with General Electric for ballast a salesman
forwards his specifications to the central plant. Mr. Carson outlines his order system. AJAYI every evening they will transmit this to us over telephone lines. They have eight. What is its a teletype you know was a repair paper tape which is transmitted to us. And we had an have a receiver here we. Can gather this data. Every evening. And it then is. Read into our computer. Directly. And in effect the order is entered into our. Order entry system. Then comes out the what we call our proof sheets where it's edited to make sure all the data is there that has to be there because we need a. Vast and I statistics with this order. And to make sure that. I was Cobra gave you the right price and everything else. It is edited. And. It is in check for
availability. And this is. Partly a computer check partly a manual check. Depends when you want delivery basically. And. Assuming that you want it right now and it is available. And we have a triggering mechanism. Manned to machine communication which says All right cut a bill of lading. On this order. And the computer cuts the bill of lading. And which in turn is transported to the warehouse and they ship it. And it didn't come as back in and we check to make sure once it is shipped that they ship. What if you ordered a 100 and we could find 90 out on the shelf. That. That we didn't change the order and Bill you only for 90. Instead of the hundred. One thing that Mr. Carson wanted to make clear was that an industry cannot just program its old systems for a computer. Changes are a necessity. This is a. Little. Pet bugaboo of mine.
Then. Everybody. Says great we've got a computer. And I've got 16 girl sitting here with pencils. Let's put their job on. The computer. And I can maybe don't need 16 girls I only need. 10. Or. $4 some number. And I get done faster and probably more accurately. And this type of thing and that the. One of the unfortunate tendencies that in the past especially. Not so much anymore is to have become used to computers. Is that. When you mechanise. Something is being done manually and you let the computer do it the same way it was done manually. And this is the. The bane of all. Computer installations they've got inefficient systems because it probably should have been. Studied and some other way more amenable to computer processing.
Designed to do the job. And. Someone you have enough inefficient systems. That have just. Been with you over the years and we have our share of these here. And the other. Aspect of this is that. Any time you mechanise something. You know you're mechanizing a man your job or a whole new system. You introduce in flexibility. Because the machines are really stupid and they don't know one thing they can't do a thing that somebody didn't tell me to do and you can't just call across a desk or write James a number on your. Or your trial balance their to something else. Because it doesn't understand you. And. Your inputs have to be in a. Specific format going in. Have to be correct they have to be exact.
I had a very. Strange complaint one time not any complaint I was talking to. One of the people here just after we had stalled our first computer. And at that time we put on a new application form he says when one thing wrong with your computers cars and I said what's that he says are there two exact. Words. If I have have ordered. 6000 feet of cable. And they send me $6 and four feet of cable. There are times where the membership me. And I want that to be $6. The Magnavox Combinator ballet Illinois also uses computers to assess its production rate in quality much essential communications equipment for the armed forces it's assembled at the Urbana flat of Magnavox. High standards and quick output are a necessity in this business. At regular intervals employee efficiency reports are tallied by the
computer to indicate problem area. My old Meadows assistant controller for system and data processing of Magnavox intervallic explains why these reports are prepared. They are used for two purposes they're not a club to hang a really in poly and I would miss understood where they are and the reports that we produce are used by the foreman to find out if an employee is having trouble. Let's call it making his rate or meeting his standard and if so it might be a change in process would be required just in order to bring him up so he could keep the line flowing. Also the it might be and we've had this happen it might be a left handed person on a right handed station. Now this sounds a little silly but when these people are trained since most people are right handed they're trained to do things from a right handed standpoint. And we found in two three cases that there was a left handed person that was getting it backward and couldn't make the right.
I would say that it's used primarily However for the benefit of the individual him say off as well as the immediate first line Foreman so that he can keep the line flowing and pick out the trouble spots are per hour if you want to get that way to a troubled employee. That may be for one reason or another because of manual dexterity not being able to work in that particular location. Magnavox also makes use of its computer facilities to prepare the company payroll. This is a job often assigned to a computer because it is highly repetitious time consuming and fairly easy to program. Miles Meadows describes the method of preparing the payroll at Magnavox by computer. We have a data collection system and this is where the raw data is entered something and in the case of the hourly employee we use the computer to prepare a time card and certain information is pretty punched in the hear his
name his employee number a badge number. The department that he's assigned to and maybe even his workstation and his foreman. Now the employee will come in when it comes to work takes his card out of a rack and punches it into a time clock and then takes it with him to wherever his workstation happens to be. And if he performs tasks during the day he will record on his time card in spaces allocated for this the job that he's working on and how much time he spends on it. Also if he will record the number of units that he processes or produces during a particular time then at the end of the day then these are gathered up by the form when an employee may have. Possibly two or three time cards where he's run out of space and these are gathered up by the foreman and checked for accuracy and then turned over to our timekeeping manager who again audits them for accuracy and eventually they wind up in our
data processing room where their keep I just and once the latest keep and then it's goes into the well we call it the master payroll system based on the entries that are made and only individuals timecard We of course calculate his pay and take whatever deductions are necessary according to the wall and others that he has optionals and then the time that he has spent the units that he produces and the various what we call standards that he's measured against. Go out into the related systems of cum office. Actually a list of computer applications in the field of industry would be endless. Computers are helping to make television sets to manufacture margarine and even the built computers. The
development of new hardware for today's computers may add to this gigantic list with surprising applications already graphical display units are interacting with computers to design next year's automobiles. Andy Van Dam associate professor of computer science at Brown University names is a part of the impact of graphics. Well it hasn't fact been fighting in the street for quite a few years no one has been quite productively. That is when money savings involved for instance General Motors and Ford. Also I have used computer graphics techniques to help design parts of. Of present the available computer presently available automobiles such as the Mustang. For instance. Rooflines have been designed in the computer with. Various kinds of internal parts. Of the computer have been the zine using computer graphics. Lockheed GA which is an aircraft designer and manufacturer has used the computer to help do parts programming for simple parts
of an airplane. Circuit layout has been done. The circuit layout for instance for a printed circuit diagram such as such as types one finds them both in computers and in transistor radio. Have been done using computer graphics where a circuits designer sits down at the console and sketches the layout plugs the graphical layout into a program which analyzes the electrical feasibility let's say of the design and then tells him what is right and what is wrong he does things in the manner of a couple of hours or so has completed design without having had to resort for him. It's to a draftsman as in the old days even the fabrics industry can claim help from the computer at the hemisphere and San Antonio. There is a. Jock card weaving which is computer controlled and the pattern which we sketched on the face of a display console. And while it's being sketched the weaving pattern is being set up and within five
minutes or so you can get a piece of finished cloth with the pattern on it that you drawn on the screen. Fascinating upper case. Today we've considered the computer and industry from baking cake to refining gasoline on our next program we'll visit an imaginary city built in air by computers. Each week the University of Illinois radio service brings you a new meaning behind the slogan of the computer age. Do not fold band staple or mutilate this card. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.
- Series
- Do Not Fold
- Episode Number
- 4
- Producing Organization
- University of Illinois
- Contributing Organization
- University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/500-4x54k000
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-4x54k000).
- Description
- Series Description
- "Do Not Fold" is a program about the growing applications of computer technology. Each episode focuses on how different professions and sectors are using computers to explore new possibilities in their line of work. Interviewees discuss how they are incorporating new technology into their work, what these innovations mean for the future of their field, and how they may affect the general public.
- Date
- 1969-04-03
- Genres
- Documentary
- Topics
- Education
- Technology
- Media type
- Sound
- Duration
- 00:29:34
- Credits
-
-
Producer: Johnson, Jiffy
Producing Organization: University of Illinois
Production Designer: Haney, Edna
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
University of Maryland
Identifier: 69-19-4 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:21
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “Do Not Fold; 4,” 1969-04-03, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed September 8, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-4x54k000.
- MLA: “Do Not Fold; 4.” 1969-04-03. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. September 8, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-4x54k000>.
- APA: Do Not Fold; 4. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-4x54k000