Changing Relationships at the R & D/Production Interface

The core of any manufacturing company is formed by production, marketing and research and development (R&D). In the future production and R&D need to integrate their efforts to solve problems more quickly and to generate more effective plant designs. For production/R&D links the most important new technologies are the use of computers and their intercommunication. Computer Aided Design (CAD) and its extensions are probably the most important, but others such as expert systems and modelling will play a part. The key factor is the creation of common data bases holding as much relevant information as is practical. These will only be useful if production and R&D analyse purposes, methodologies and data storage and usage together.