TOKYO -- A project underway in Germany may one day have historians referring to the southern city of Kaiserslautern as the "birthplace of the 21st century industrial revolution."
Siemens and nine other German manufacturers have converged there to create an "artificially intelligent" production system. In a nutshell, manufacturing units in the plant read information on IC chips affixed to incoming production materials and, based on the data, arrange themselves for optimal production efficiency.
