The American Scene; Job Hor: Manufacturing Industries

. Likely low in the upper forties and tomorrow partly cloudy and warmer chance of thunderstorms high in the sixties. Easily winds twelve to eighteen miles per hour today and east to southeast ten to fifteen miles per hour tonight. This is WMACU and WMACU FM NBC in Chicago at seven o 'clock. The American scene, a series of pre -recorded programs, providing a closer look at those things which form our contemporary society. Produced by the Illinois Institute of Technology and Cooperation with WMACU, the discussion today will consider job horizons in the manufacturing industries. Now here is our host, Don Anderson. Good morning and welcome to the American scene. There are a few areas of American industry which involve as many disciplines of

knowledge as does the manufacturing industry. Experts are needed in all stages from the raw material through the manufacturing process or system and even into sales and management. The metalworking industry is perhaps the prime example of our topic today. It has long been a major factor in the American scene. It accounts for approximately one third of our gross national product and it involves a vast range of businesses concerned with the production and use of metals. It also exemplifies a traditional industry which is now faced with the growing impact of automation or automatic controls and with vigorous competition from newer industries such as plastics. The metalworking industry is feeling the inevitable force of technological change. Consider that in 1908 one man spent eight hours making a fuel tank for an automobile. In 1963 a machine could make a fuel tank in 20 seconds. Or that in 1940 it took 24 hours to make an engine block for an

automobile. In 1963 it took just a little over 14 minutes. One fact becomes clear. The only effective advantage one industry has over another is in its human resource. Brains rather than brawn are in demand. Because of this employment standards are stiffening. A high school diploma is no longer a guarantee for a job in many areas. And for those areas most apt to grow with the future. A college education and even graduate work is essential. The sweeper and pick and shovel man will still be around but in very small number. The need will be for scientists and engineers, versed in electronics or mechanics or metallurgy. Men with imagination and foresight able to design and manage and sell the systems and products of tomorrow's changing industries. To give us some insight into the job horizon of the manufacturing industry. I'm pleased to welcome this morning, Dr. A. Frank D'Souza, a system

professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at IIT. And Mr. Cereaupe Calpaccian, associate professor also with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at IIT. Welcome this morning, gentlemen. Thank you for coming. And I wonder if the example I used of the manufacturing industries, namely the metalworking industry, is really a good example. Is this indicative of what's happening in all phases of manufacturing today? Oh, I would say so. Metalworking industry is not only representative of the bulk of manufacturing industries, but it is also representative of an activity where a number of diverse disciplines enter the picture. When you make a product today, even a simple cup, you require a knowledge of metallurgy, of strength of materials, of mechanics, of surface phenomena, of lubrication and various subjects like that. And it is actually one of the few areas where you can use

this great variety of disciplines and come up with a product. The challenges are there. They are as interesting as anything one can think of. Dr. D'Souza, the changes that perhaps will take place in the metalworking industry, are they pretty much similar to what might take place and let's say the plastics manufacturing industry? I would be inclined to say so. Of course, the process industries were the first people to start applying automatic control to batch and continuous processes. And during the last war, there was quite a lot of demand made for fire control, missile, radar. And due to this, a lot of developments have taken place in controls. And then the aerospace industry realized that they

could benefit to a great deal by application of automatic control to manufacturing. And I would say the aerospace industry, the foreign years, in applying numerical control and becoming more and more trained now. In private industries. In private industries. In the manufacturing industries in general. Well, let's devote most of our attention this morning to the metalworking industry and use this as an example of what might be expected to happen in other areas of manufacturing in general. Now, both of you have a slightly different approach to this problem. Although you both are in the same department at IIT. Your major interest is different and yet it applies to the field of metalworking. Mr. Calpaction, what is your approach to this field of metalworking? Well, I am interested in

trying to study what happens to a piece of metal when you try to change its shape. When you take any product today, it had a different shape once. And you find that it has a number of holes in it. It has elements, components which have been bent to certain shapes. All these things require careful study. When you take a piece of metal and you want to make certain part out of it. You want to know, for instance, how much force it takes, how much power it takes to do that job. Secondly, you want to find out how much you can define the material before it breaks. Because you want to end up with a product which doesn't have any flaws, any cracks in it. Similarly, when you take some of the new materials that are being used more and more in the aerospace industries, they are very difficult materials normally to form or to machine. Unless you study the process itself as to what goes on when you cut

a metal that is going into some space craft. You won't be able to find out what are the factors that eventually may cause trouble if the surface finishes bad. Or if the part is weak because the operation hasn't been unproperly. Unless you study these factors from a very basic point of view, you won't be able to get to the heart of the matter. And as a result, you won't be able to develop equipment and processes which are really efficient. In terms of the scope of the field, but taking it from the raw material to the finished product, you're sort of in the middle there. You've got the... I have a raw material which is in some sort of shapes, such as a flat plate, for instance. But by the middle, I mean, after, let's say, a fondry, if you're working with steel, after a fondry. And then Dr. D'Souza, what is your approach to this? Of course, my chief area of interest is automatic controls. And one of the applications of controls is to manufacturing,

especially copying machines, using mass production, numerical control, using computers in the loop. So what you do is take the product or the raw material that Mr. Calpacti understands the properties of, and then you try and develop machineries or systems or processes to... Well, let's say, develop a system that controls these machines. That will do what is needed. You see, it's a quarry specialized area. And you'd find very few companies in the nation who specialize in both, manufacturing machines, and at the same time, manufacturing systems that control this. So what they usually rely on outside specialists to build a system for them. There are, of course, a few exceptions, I would say, a few

companies who do specialize in both. In other words, I'll tell Frank that in order to form this part, I need so much force. And my dials and tools will have to travel at a certain speed. And he is supposed to design the equipment whereby he can give me that much force at those particular velocities. It completes the picture. I think both of these areas are becoming very specialized now and indicate the kind of changes that will be taking place in this industry. Because metal has been around for a long, long time and has been used as a major product in our country and our society for a long time. And yet now we're developing very specialized knowledge about the properties, the characteristics of materials, of metal, and about new ways of processing it, of making it into a finished product. That's correct. Well, this will indicate somewhat, then, the kinds of skills that are going to be needed

in the future, or the kind of skills that will disappear in the future. Would you want to comment a little bit about that? Well, one of the most important trends is that our materials are becoming stronger and stronger. They are becoming more and more difficult to form and shape and to cut. And as I pointed out earlier, it is necessary to have a fundamental knowledge. In the old times, you heated a piece of metal to a certain temperature just by looking at how red the part was and then start hammering. Now, times have changed. Not only the use of the available knowledge is limited, its application is limited, but also there are many economic factors. Materials, these space -age materials are very, very expensive and you cannot really afford to use your traditional cutting -tried methods. So you must go a little more intelligently about it. And for this, one needs a very sound formal education. As I pointed out, you need a good knowledge of the strength of materials, of metallurgy, of plasticity, of lubrication,

and friction, and factors like that. In addition to economic considerations, the times have changed. You really cannot use your past knowledge as efficient as you think you can. And furthermore, a graduate study is necessary because it's only in the graduate school that one really has the proper background and the opportunity to look deeper into the problems involved rather than have a preliminary understanding of what goes on. And a lot of the things we do today do require research and development attitude. That's extremely important. What sort of impact would you say the aerospace industry is having on manufacturing? Well, they are the industries which handle these materials before anybody else. And they are the ones because of their large amounts of funds and facilities. They are the ones that really pioneer some of the new areas. For instance, explosive forming, electro -discharge machining, electrochemical machining, and so on. Explain those just a little bit. What do you mean by... Well, you

can form a cup, for instance, by a male punch pushing the metal into a female punch. However, it is possible to eliminate the male punch completely, just use some sort of a female die and fill the top part of the metal with the water and have a small amount of explosive and detonate it. And the pressure wave, the shock wave, is sufficient to form this cup, purely through a liquid medium rather than the male punch. Now, here is an excellent example. One of the most important factors in the cost of equipment is to make a matching male and female die. This way you can eliminate the male die and come up with a process which is quite inexpensive and does the job rather nicely in addition to other advantages to it. Electro -discharge machining, for instance, if you want to drill a hole, you could use a drill, but on some of the newer materials you cannot do so, because the life of the drill is not long enough. You use electric sparks.

It is more complicated than it is the eye, but you use electric sparks and they do the drilling job for you little by little. You mean that the new material is so strong or so hard that the traditional way? That the life of tools is very short and you cannot drill a hole 2 -3 inches deep without changing the drill at times or really sharpening it. What would you say to using very high frequency drills? Well, there is the whole area of ultrasonic machining, for instance, that is a very interesting area. But a lot of these areas are still in their embryonic stages and there is an enormous amount of work to be done. We in this country are doing a great deal of work in some of these areas, but Western Europe isn't sleeping neither is the Soviet Union. Recent statistics have shown, for instance, that the efforts in research and development in Western Europe are six times the efforts that we have in this country. And this is a little disturbing. That is why we have now

renewed programs in the 2000 also schools where these courses are taught at a graduate level, where we are stressing the importance of research. So that is the future. You mentioned the aerospace industry as being a pioneer in materials and also in processes. Are these techniques moving into other manufacturing areas as well? Yes, eventually they will. There are, of course, problem areas. Not all of them work as well as they should. They require special understanding, special skills to use this, but eventually they will certainly go. The trouble is, of course, much of industry does not really use some of these aerospace materials. So what they have is rather sufficient for their immediate purposes. However, if you come up with a new process and whereby you can show that it's more economical and it also gives you better products than Wyoming means you should go into it. The

change, of course, takes time because the metalworking industry has equipment and machinery, which is rather large, which is quite expensive. And you don't really have always the funds near the state of mind to come up and buy some brand new machine, which you are not too much about. How would you characterize the industry today, anxious to move into this area? Well, I think the leaders of industry appreciate the importance of some of these new areas, particularly in the near future and future. However, it is not one of the more profitable industries, possibly whereby they are somewhat reluctant to change their machinery. It is, for instance, true that many of them would like to change their equipment, such as lathe and machines in their shops. Some of them are quite old, but they can't quite afford to do it. I would say that the leaders of industry do understand the problem very nicely, but it will

be quite some time before the change is at a rate that some of us would like to see. Dr. D'Souza, even if some of the materials that are being developed in the aerospace industry are not immediately going into normal industry as we know it, the techniques of automatic control and automation are, aren't they? Yes, I would say so. Explain a little bit about how this might affect the processes in the manufacturing. Well, let me say what is being done now in the moment. For example, take numerical controls. Now, a programmer studies the blow print and programs it in a language. A lot of languages have been developed for this. Then he communicates with the computer programs it in the computer language. Yes, that's right. And the computer punches the tape, which is rare in a tape reader,

and by means of hardware, the tool, either the tool or the job is positioned at every instant of time. Now, you call this numerical control. This is exactly it. Now, what does this mean, numerical control? We are asking some questions that will take an hour or day. No, the very fact, the name I can explain a great deal about what is being done. For example, the programmer calculates the part that the tools should take at every instant of time. And this is a program in some language that computer understands. Are there other systems besides numerical control? Yes, a copying system, for example, where you have maybe a job, you want to copy, and you have some hardware that would move the tool exactly in the fashion that it desired. In other words, this is for mass production. Just for mass production, this is a product. You can copy that

product through automatic controls. What is this going to do to the traditional jobs in the working industry? I would say that there's a transient period during which most probably some jobs might become obsolete. But of course, it creates demand for some of the skills like people to program the machines. I would be more inclined to believe that it does reduce the cost. And in this fashion, it does create a demand just because the cost of production has gone down. It would create a demand for the product. And it would create more jobs than it does really replace. Might it also change the classification of particular jobs? For instance, a repairman in a plant

has a particular job to do with a mechanical machine. But when we introduce these electronic devices or these automatic controls, then his skill level has to be raised accordingly. Yes, I would be inclined to say so. And this kind of skill would have to be gotten from formal education, I would assume. Yes, formal education, training. Of course, now, a graduate school has almost become essential for most of the engineers. And most of the companies do send engineers to graduate school at their own expense. This brings up a point that a person who even had a college education maybe 10 years ago may find himself not up to date with current findings. Yes, that's right. Some of the areas like automatic controls is very dynamic, is moving, is moving is very, very fast rate. How do we

counteract this? Programs of continuing education, I would assume. Well, there are various methods, many schools, like IIT, have special summer courses. One week or two week short courses were engineers from industry who have been out of school for, say, 10 years, 20 years. Come back for a week or two and we tell them what is new in the area for their immediate benefit. It's nothing impractical what we tell them. It is very important with regard to specific processes. For instance, 20 years ago there was no such thing as electro -discharge machine, electrochemical machine, explosive forming. A lot of these things are very, very new. It is, of course, possible to have an understanding of these topics through, by leading the technical journals and magazines, but still, it is not the same thing as going into a classroom and spending a few days and going through a more formal

study and presentation. I understand even this Tuesday that there is going to be a workshop really on this very subject. Yes, Tuesday and Wednesday, we have a two -day workshop under the title Trends in Modern Manufacturing. We have two full days of lectures by Vibili to be eminent authorities. We are looking forward to it. First we have sent invitations to surrounding states and to companies in Illinois where we will present the major phases of our area, such as looking at manufacturing processes as a system rather than an individual process. And then we have a lecture on the trends in the formal education of engineers. In many schools, the subject is taught, but it is not really taught at the level which really challenges the imagination of the student, whereby he himself may someday come up with some new solutions rather than just

learning how a lady is operated or what a machine looks like. To whom is this particular workshop directions? Well, it is directed to people in industry at a management level, also research and scientific levels. We are quite hopeful that we will have a fine group and we will discuss some of these topics. Research is another area which we will discuss, particularly Europe near research, because many of us perhaps don't realize, as I mentioned earlier, that European research and machine collectivities is six times that hour, which is a little disturbing. Well, that is very interesting, is that because we haven't had to, that we have had a large enough market for the products that we turn out, the way we turn them out? Well, there are basic differences. Europe, of course, by tradition, has been more on the theoretical side of things. We have been more product oriented. Of course, they have a far longer history than we have.

The European state of mind is interested, the ones in machine tool and materials processing research. They really are interested in going deeper and deeper into an individual subject. Whereas we look at the subjects and we try to pick up the ones that we feel will become a product within the near future. We have this great awareness of products. We have developed processes like explosive forming, for instance. However, the original ideas, in some cases, is not ours. Electrodischard machine was started about 20 years ago in Russia. The first work in metal cutting studies was done in Russia towards the end of the 19th century. Explosive forming of metals was originally a British pattern towards the end of the 19th century. So these are interesting things, and yet we have lasers and many others. That was developed here in this country. Yes. What about the automatic controls? Is that a primary development of this country?

Is that too hard to trace? No, it's not very hard to trace. I believe that the first automatic control system built was the flyball governor developed by Watt. It was somewhere around 1780 or so. Of course, the times have changed, and those days people didn't have the theory. They had a practical know -how, and they tried to apply build systems, test them, see if they made the specifications. If they didn't, they tried to modify them. Test them again. If they didn't, they didn't know what to do with them. So they just later for a while until... I would say the last World War had a big impact, especially due to radar, fire control, and most of the theory that has evolved has been largely a result of the last World War. And since then, of course, now aerospace

industries have come up, and the demand is still more in adaptive controls, learning systems, that learn from past experience, they try to improve their performance. Of course, this is a far -out cry. One day, maybe system built by men would compete with men, but some people are still trying to express these thoughts. Think it may be possible, but if it is, it still would be very far in the future. Yes, it is very, very far -cast, and of course, it is ridiculous to say that men can build something that would compete with men. What about the atmosphere for research now? You say Europe does six times more than we are. Are we starting to devote more attention to the research area? Oh, yes. Mainly through the efforts of some of the leaders in materials processing research, either through individual groups or through professional societies,

we are now becoming more and more active. Right now, there are about 2 ,000 universities in this country where they do materials processing research. However, when you begin to realize that there are over 2 ,000 colleges in this country, and just 2 ,000 out of 2 ,000 isn't really very impressive. What about the industry itself? The industry itself, in some cases, is not in the majority of cases by any means, they have their own research activities. Again, that is somewhat more product -oriented, whereas if it is done in the university atmosphere, it is of a broader significance, of a larger... The basic knowledge is sought. Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you very much. This has been a most interesting program this morning, and I think the indication is that there are going to be vast changes in the manufacturing industry in the future, and that although the number of jobs may not be affected, certainly the skills that are going to be required will be affected, and that

the ultimate answer is, more education, greater education, graduate education for everyone concerned. And I want to thank you again very much for pleasure with us this morning, and this is Don Anderson saying, good morning for the American scene. Music This has been the American scene, today's discussion, job horizons in the manufacturing industry, had his guest, Dr. A. Frank D'Souza, assistant professor with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at IIT, and Cirope Calpaccian, also with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Post on the series is Don Anderson, Director of

Public Service Broadcasting for Illinois Tech. The American scene is pre -recorded and is produced by the Illinois Institute of Technology and Cooperation with WMAQ. Next week's topic will be a look at the 21st century, and will be discussed by Dr. Leonard Reifel and Dr. Peter Likos, as we continue our investigation of the American scene. Here's the fact April is teaching career month, now we'll have a spot quiz, what's the largest profession in this country?