Word: conveyors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...many ways the scene resembles any modern factory. A conveyor glides silently past five work stations, periodically stopping, then starting again. Each station is staffed by an attendant in a sterile mask and smock. The workers have just three minutes to complete their tasks before the conveyor moves on; they turn out 20 finished pieces in an hour...
Nearly everything else about the assembly line, however, is highly unusual: the workers are eye surgeons, and the conveyor carries human beings on stretchers. This is the Moscow Research Institute of Eye Microsurgery, where the production methods of Henry Ford are applied to the practice of medicine. The center is the brainchild of renowned Soviet Eye Surgeon Svyatoslav Fyodorov, 57, who calls it a "medical factory for the production of people with good eyesight...
...office and factory workers are already using simple voice-control computer systems to do everything from dialing telephones to controlling assembly lines. At Chicago's O'Hare Airport, for example, United Airlines baggage handlers call out the names of airports as they toss suitcases on a computer- driven conveyor belt. A voice-recognition system, responding to their commands, dumps each piece of luggage into a tray marked for the appropriate airport and sends it rolling toward its destination...
...hours a year. Beginning at around 11 p.m., some 60 planes arrive with a mountain of packages to be sorted and reloaded on the jets, which take off again between 2:50 a.m. and 4 a.m. Federal's 761,000-sq.-ft. complex contains 20 miles of conveyor belts. Computers track the location of each parcel, enabling the company to meet its deadline on 99% of packages...
...this will be done by just 300 workers, only 200 of them in production; labor accounts for 1% of the cost of making the computer. One of the keys to the increased productivity is cutting the time spent handling materials. Parts arriving at the factory are placed on conveyor belts that carry them to storage. Then, when they are needed for assembly, an operator has only to push a button to transfer them to the work station, either by moving belts or by vehicles guided by wires embedded in the floor. In some cases, robots attach parts to circuit boards...