machine

Examples of machine in the following topics:

• Simple Machines

  • A simple machine is a device that changes the direction of a force or augments a force; simple machines fall into six categories.
  • Usually, the term "simple machine" is referring to one of the six classical simple machines, defined by Renaissance scientists.
  • When a device with a specific movement, called a mechanism, is joined with others to form a machine, these machines can be broken down into elementary movements.
  • Simple machines which do not experience frictional losses are called ideal machines.
  • Table of simple mechanisms, from Chambers' Cyclopedia, 1728. [1] Simple machines provide a "vocabulary" for understanding more complex machines.

• Vending Machines

  • A vending machine can dispense a wide variety of merchandise when the consumer inserts money into it.
  • A vending machine is a machine which dispenses items such as snacks, beverages, alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, consumer products and even gold and gems to customers automatically, after the customer inserts currency or credit into the machine .
  • The most common form of vending machine, the snack machine, often uses a metal coil which rotates to release an ordered product.
  • The main example of a vending machine giving access to all merchandise after paying for one item is a newspaper vending machine (also called vending box) found mainly in the U.S. and Canada.
  • This is a Best Buy Express vending machine at an airport terminal, stocked with electronics.

• Production lines come in all shapes and sizes

  • As Peter Zelinski, editor of Modern Machine Shop Magazine explains, usually there are two ways to produce a machine part or product.
  • Big, multi-function machines can cost much more when compared to a series of smaller machines that perform the same function.
  • Moreover, an entire production operation can grind to a halt when a large, multi-functional machine tool is shut down for repairs (in addition, maintenance costs for large machines are also higher than those of smaller machines).
  • The cost of the smaller machine?
  • (Zelinski, Peter, ‘Why Boeing is Big on Right-Size Machine Tools')

• Urban Politics

  • During the Gilded Age, politics were characterized by the "political machines."
  • One of the most well known machines was that of Tammany Hall in New York.
  • He explains how the machine worked:
  • Benefits and problems both resulted from the rule of political machines.
  • Machine politics persisted in Chicago after the decline of similar machines in other large American cities.

• Putting together a clean production line

  • Is this machine or item really necessary?
  • Is the full life-cycle cost of the machine being considered rather than its purchase price?
  • Inefficient, energy-hungry machines can consume their initial purchasing cost in energy per week.
  • The second includes how much the machine costs to operate in the long-term.
  • Deficient (or zero) measurement makes it difficult, if not impossible, to determine how much a machine costs.

• Accounting Perspectives on Long-Lived Assets

  • Items that can be capitalized when the firm purchases a machine include the machine itself, transportation, getting the machine in place, fees paid for having the machine installed and tested, the cost of a trial run, and alike.
  • If the firm's own personnel are involved with installing the machine, their wage expenses can be allocated to the machine as well.
  • Examples that are excluded from the asset, and consequently are expense rather than capital costs, include the training of personnel to learn how to use the machine, unexpected damages while installing the machine, or the drinks and snacks to celebrate the machine's successful launch.

• Industrial Societies: The Birth of the Machine

  • These technologies enabled a reconfiguration of the economic system, as machines were now able to perform functions that previously had to be performed by people.
  • Starting in the later part of the 18th century, there began a transition in parts of Great Britain's previously manual labor and draft-animal-based economy toward machine-based manufacturing.
  • With the transition away from an agricultural-based economy and toward machine-based manufacturing came a great influx of population from the countryside and into the towns and cities, which swelled in population.
  • The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacturing of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries.
  • Analyze the shift from manual to machine based labor during the First and Second Industrial Revolutions

• Productivity Gains from Hardware

  • The spinning mule allowed a large number of threads to be spun by a single machine using water power.
  • Before machine tools, it was prohibitively expensive to make precision parts, an essential requirement for many machines and interchangeable parts.
  • Perhaps the best early example of a productivity increase by machine tools and special purpose machines is the Portsmouth Block Mills.
  • With these machines, 10 men could produce as many blocks as 110 skilled craftsmen.
  • Historically important machine tools are the screw-cutting lathe, milling machine, and metal planer (metalworking), which all came into use between 1800 and 1840.

• City Government and the "Bosses"

  • Louis, etc.) were accused of using political machines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
  • Many political machines formed in cities to serve immigrants to the U.S. in the late nineteenth century who viewed machines as a vehicle for political enfranchisement.
  • Machine staffers helped win elections by turning out large numbers of voters on election day.
  • Later-arriving immigrants, such as Jews and Italians, rarely saw any reward from the machine system.
  • Evaluate the significance of the political machine in nineteenth century America

• Demand-pull production system and quick setups to reduce lot sizes

  • The traditional approach to manufacturing management promotes a strong focus on machine and labor utilization.The view was that if managers make sure that workers and machines are always busy, then surely the factory will be productive and efficient.This approach is called the "push" system of manufacturing, where raw material and work-in-process is continuously pushed through the factory in the pursuit of high utilization.The problem with this approach is that it usually produces high levels of inventories, long lead times, overtime costs, high levels of potential rework, and workers who are competing with one another rather than working cooperatively.
  • To keep unit production costs under control, 3M studied the setups on its coating machines.
  • Since the cost of chemical waste disposal was a major part of the cost of changing over a coating machine to make another product, 3M shortened the length of hoses that needed purging and redesigned the shape of the adhesive solution holding pan on the coating machine to be shallower. 3M also used quick-connect devices, disposable filters, and work teams to speed up setups.
  • The result was that 3M could maintain low unit costs on its coating machines while producing small lots of hundreds of products to meet market demand quickly.