Mass production in its development follows the path of automation. Highly mechanized and automated mass production – a system of machinery, equipment, vehicles, ensuring strict consistent performance over time of all stages of manufacturing of products, from the receipt of initial preparations and ending the control (test) and finished product output at regular intervals. First there were designed automated production lines and hard-operated plants. With the advent of electronic software management tools created by computer numerical control (CNC) machining centers and transfer lines containing as a component of computer-controlled equipment. At the core of automated production lines are automated, which possess all the advantages of mass production, allows continuity production processes combine to automaticity of their performance. Automatic line (AL) – a system of automatic machines, placed in the course of the process and integrated system of management and automatic mechanisms and devices to meet the challenges of transportation, storage backlog, waste management, changes in orientation.
Automatic Lipno are used for automatically defined operations (stages) of the production process, depending on the type of raw material (billets), size, weight, and the technological complexity of manufactured products, so in the AL may include different numbers of Equipment: 5-10 for medium complexity products to 100-150 units. equipment for mass production of complex products. The complex includes the AL transport system for feeding blanks from a warehouse to stand, move outboard processing equipment from one booth to another to transport finished products from the stands on the main line or storage. Emit hard (synchronous) automatic production lines with characteristic of a rigid and unified communications mezhagregatnoy cycle of the machines and flexible (unsynchronized) AL mezhagregatnoy flexible coupling. In this case, each machine has its individual store drive mezhoperatsionpyh backlog. In Depending on the functional purpose of the AL in engineering may be procurement, machining, thermal, mechanical assembly, assembly, test, packaging, conservation and complex.