ABSTRACT
In industrial production, many different processes or manufacturing methods are used. This chapter considers a coherent picture of the common structure on which all processes are based. To produce any change in property, three essential agents must be available: material, energy, and information. Depending on the main purpose of the process, it is either a material process, an energy process, or an information process. The general process model shows that a material process can be described by the associated flow system: material flow, energy flow, and information flow. When analyzing manufacturing processes it appears that they can all be described by a general morphological model built up from a few fundamental elements related to the three flow systems. The fundamental elements in the morphological model are: material flow, state of material, basic process, and type of flow. The material flow system can be graphically illustrated in various ways.
