Computer Integrated Manufacturing

CIM can be defined as interface of CAD, CAM and Direct (or Distributed) Numerical
Control (DNC) with logistic information system.

From: Agile Manufacturing: The 21st Century Competitive Strategy, 2001

Related terms:

Semiconductor, Amplifier, Computer Aided Process Planning, Resistors, Capaci-

tance, Transistors, Chrominance

View all Topics

COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN
Dominick Rosato, Donald Rosato, in Plastics Engineered Product Design, 2003

CIM changing
The computer-integrated Manufacturing pyramid of the 1980s has been crum-
bled to make way for a variety of better models for manufacturing information
technology in the 2000s. The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model;
the Manufacturing Execution Systems Association (MESA) model; and the AMR
Research's Ready, Execute, Process, Analyze, & Coordinate (REPAC) model all define
manufacturing applications from a functional point of view. Meanwhile, you can
define manufacturing applications from the point of view of vertical markets, specific
implementation models, and a broad range of functional category.

There have been many acronyms and models in the past two decades that describe
the topic of manufacturing application software. However, regardless of naming and
modeling, manufacturers fundamental needs have not changed significantly. What
has changed is the availability of commercial software, experience in applying soft-
ware applications to manufacturing, and the emergence of standards for applying
software and computer technology to manufacturing.

Today, many well-developed tools are available that can be successfully applied to
meet the functional needs of manufacturing processes. Experience gained applying
software and computers to manufacturing has been well documented, and interna-
tional standards communicate generally accepted best practices in manufacturing
systems integration. Manufacturers today can take advantage of experience gained
from early adopter's efforts and apply current technology with a high degree of
confidence that the application will successfully meet requirements.

> Read full chapter

Computer Aided Process Planning for

Agile Manufacturing Environment
Neelesh K. Jain, Vijay K. Jain, in Agile Manufacturing: The 21st Century Competitive
Strategy, 2001

2.4. Enabling philosophies/techniques/tools

Broadly speaking, both Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) and Concurrent
Engineering (CE) are enabling philosophies for agile manufacturing environment.
These philosophies should be considered more than collections of tools and tech-
niques for manufacturing management. A company committed to both of these
philosophies is well positioned to qualify as an agile manufacturer. But, vice-versa
is not true, i.e. an agile manufacturer may use neither CIM nor CE. Also, it is
possible for a manufacturer to be a “CIM organization” without employing CE or
“CE organization” without CIM [4].

CIM can be defined as interface of CAD, CAM and Direct (or Distributed) Numerical
Control (DNC) with logistic information system. Its definition also includes a group
of intelligent machine cells or Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) constituting a
small local network. Concept of CIM is based on integrating computer technology
and Artificial Intelligence (AI) into a machine tool, while agile manufacturing is more
focused on the networking. Therefore, it can be regarded as macro CIM system [3].

CE is a concept that refers to the participation of all functional areas of the firm,
including customers and suppliers, in the product design activity so as to enhance
the design with inputs from all the key stakeholders. This process ensures that
final design of the product meets all the needs of the stakeholders and ensures
that the product can be brought quickly to the market while maximizing quality
and minimizing associated costs. Table 2 presents enabling philosophies, tools, or
technologies of agile manufacturing, along with their functions or objectives and
the means of achieving them.

Table 2. Enablers of agile manufacturing, their functions, and means.

Enabler Functions or objectives
Virtual Enterprise (VE) for- *To facilitate reconfigura-
mation tion of the organization,
as a single organization is
not able to develop suf-
ficient internal capabilities
to respond quickly and ef-
fectively to changing pro-
duction needs.
Physically distributed teams *To support agility with
and manufacturing the objective to reduce
time-to-market.
Rapid partnership formation *To provide the firm with
(Partnership formation precedes new technologies, prod-
VE formation and it is a ucts, markets, critical re-
sub-function of VE formation) sources, and core com-
petencies,*To position a
company in the compet-
itive global manufactur-
ing spectrum by combin-
ing its technical and mar-
keting skills with those of
the leader in manufactur-
ing.
Concurrent Engineering (CE) *To include customers,
suppliers, all functional
areas of the firm in de-
sign process of the prod-
uct so as to eliminate
non-value adding activi-
ties in engineering, pro-
duction, distribution, ac-
counting, and customer
Means of achieving
*A system embracing vir-
tual design, virtual man-
ufacturing, and virtu-
al assembly by extend-
ing capabilities of existing
CAD/CAM system [1],*In-
ternet assisted manufac-
turing system consisting
of CAD, CAPP, CAM, and
(CAA) integrated via Cen-
tral Network Server (CNS)
[3].
*Electronic mail (e-mail),
networks,*Graphical User
Interface (GUI),*Video
conferencing.
*Analysis of strategic and
operational opportunities
of potential partnering
firms,*Alignment of busi-
ness, manufacturing, and
operational strategies, and
pooling of core com-
petencies,*Tools: Quali-
ty Function Deployment
(QFD), Benchmarking, In-
ternet, Multimedia, Mi-
crosoft Project, Electron-
ic Data Interchange (EDI),
Case Tools, etc [1].
*Functional analysis,*Sol-
id modeling,*Finite El-
ement Analysis (FEA),*-
Design for Manufactur-
ing (DFM),*Design for
Cost (DFC),*Design for As-
sembly (DFA),*Design for
Reliability (DFR),*Design
for Ergonomics (DFE),*-
 service,*To combine con-
nectivity of CAE, CAD, and
CIM with DFM, and to fa-
cilitate agility in all areas of
VE.
Failure Mode and Ef-
fect Analysis (FMEA),*-
Optimization,*Value and
robust engineering,*CAM
and NC verification.

Integrated product/produc- *To economically achieve *Multimedia,*Internet,*-

tion/business information configurability of agile EDI.
system manufacturing system.

Rapid Prototyping (RP) *To reduce product devel- *CAD and solid model-
opment time and non-val- ing,*CAE, CE*Various RP
ue adding activities. techniques.

Electronic Commerce *To reduce cycle time, de- *Internet,*WWW, * EDI.

(E-commerce) livery time, response time,
and time-to-market.

> Read full chapter

Agile Manufacturing Strategic Options

Dr.Vicky Manthou, Dr.Maro Vlachopoulou, in Agile Manufacturing: The 21st
Century Competitive Strategy, 2001

8. COMPUTER INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING

Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) can be considered as an advanced busi-
ness philosophy that unifies a company's administration, engineering and manu-
facturing. The information technology plays a central role for planning and control-
ling the manufacturing process. It uses computers and communication networks
to transform automated manufacturing systems into interconnected systems that
cooperate across all organizational functions. CIM requires a new management
perspective and careful planning of each technical element in conjunction with
training. The goal of CIM is to remove all the barriers between all the functions
within an operation, to encourage marketing, order entry, accounting, design, man-
ufacturing, quality control, shipping and all the other departments to work closely
together throughout the process. It provides information by linking each operation
task by computer, giving decision makers access to needed information. Tasks can be
performed in parallel, not in sequence. Real CIM potential lies in creating a network
of people and activities to accelerate decision making, minimize waste, and speed
up response to customers while producing a high quality product. CIM must be
thought of as a strategic policy within a company. Commitment is required at all
levels of the company. It can be costly, and can require changes in policies that may
be difficult for those accustomed to the old methods to accept.

Some of the benefits of computer integrated manufacturing systems are:

• Cost reduction. Information handling is the way to reduce manufacturing

time. Improved accuracy and time savings can translate into reduced costs
and process time for operation. Better use of capital resources through work
automation results in higher productivity and lower cost. The automation of
the entire production process shifts management's emphasis from supervising
people to supervising machines.
• Quality improvements. CIM supports customer satisfaction resulting from the
elimination of waste from the design, engineering and production cycle.
• Greater production control. Company's efficiency increases through work
simplification and automation, better production schedules planning and
better balancing of production workload to production capacity.
• Faster responsiveness to the market. Improved product development cycles,
high levels of human and capital resource productivity, improved quality, and
short delivery time, lead CIM users to a rapid response to the market place.
• Reduced Inventory. Reduced investment in production inventories and facili-
ties through work simplification, and just in time inventory policies.
• Small lot manufacturing. CIM is based on small lot sizes and offers greater
variety of products.

In the past years several surveys have attempted to investigate the major barriers to
CIM (Shank & Govindarajan, 1992; Zammuto & O'Conner, 1992). They include:

Managers attitude. Managers view CIM as a technology than as a concept.

Successful implementation of CIM means optimization of the entire process
instead of individual production processes. Lack of understanding the tech-
nology and suitable infrastructures, contributes to managers failure to appre-
ciate CIM.
Top management commitment. CIM installation must start from the top with
a commitment to provide the necessary time, money and other resources
needed to make the changes that CIM requires.
Integration. One of the strongest means to implement CIM is integration,
which has to be established consistently at several levels at the same time (i.e.
people's behaviour and organization, product and manufacturing processes,
material and information flows).
Organizational structure. The existing structure of the organization must be al-
tered to facilitate cooperation between manufacturing, accounting, marketing,
engineering, and information systems department.
Cost. Many companies are experiencing difficulties in developing cost
patterns to define specific objectives and justify CIM cost.

A company adopting CIM must take into consideration the strategy and compatibil-
ity of CIM with the overall goals of the firm. While CIM can be costly to implement,
difficult to transition, and requires a total commitment the benefits are seen in
increased quality, cost reductions, and faster work flow. Successful adoption of CIM
gives the company a competitive weapon in the global market.

> Read full chapter

A UNIFIED ARCHITECTURE FOR DE-

SIGN AND MANUFACTURING INTE-
GRATION
Steven H. Kim, in Artificial Intelligence in Engineering Design, Volume 3, 1992

10.3.3. A Unified Architecture for Manufacturing

An integrated architecture for computer-integrated manufacturing is found in the
explicit two-dimensional configuration consisting of both hierarchies and layers. The
static facet of the architecture - such as physical equipment or software modules
associated with different functional roles - is usefully envisioned in terms of a hier-
archical organization. This view is complemented by the dynamic facet of software
interactions, which is usefully implemented in a layered configuration.

A unified architecture for manufacturing admits structures of both the hierarchical

and layered types. Both arrangements may be accommodated on the communica-
tion structure shown in Figure 10-3. The next two sections discuss in greater detail
a number of key components that may comprise elements of such an integrated
system.

> Read full chapter

Toward a Human–Robot Symbiotic Sys-

tem1
Kazuhiko Kawamura, ... Duygun Erol, in Household Service Robotics, 2015
6.4.1 Introduction
The robotics field has evolved from industrial robots in the 1960s to nontraditional
branches such as medical robots and search and rescue robots in the 2000s. One
area that is gaining popularity among robotic researchers is anthropomorphic robots
or humanoid robots [1,2]. Increasing popularity reflects a recent announcement in
a new journal called the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics (IJHR). The
inaugural issue of IJHR is expected in 2004 and the Center for Intelligent Systems
was asked to contribute an article to this inaugural issue [3]. At the Cognitive
Robotics Laboratory of Vanderbilt University, we have been developing a humanoid
robot called the Intelligent Soft-Arm Control (ISAC) (Figure 1) since 1995. Originally
ISAC was designed to assist the physically disabled [4], but gradually became a
general-purpose humanoid robot to work with a human as a partner or an assistant
at home or in a factory [5]. We have developed a multi-agent architecture for
parallel, distributed robot control [6] based on a unique design philosophy [7] as
described in Section 2 of the paper, along with a robust human-robot interface [8].
Unlike many humanoid research groups in the world who put more emphasis on
human-like motion control and efficient walking pattern generation, our group
places emphasis on the cognitive aspects of the humanoid. The research described
herein is to report recent progress on developing two agents, the Human Agent and
the Self Agent, plus memory structures that enable ISAC to learn new skills. The
Human Agent is the humanoid's internal representation of the human. It includes
information about the location, activity, and state of the human, as determined
through observations and conversations. The Self Agent is the humanoid's internal
representation of itself. It provides the system with a sense of self-awareness con-
cerning the performance of hardware, behaviors and tasks. Our approach to robot
memory structures is through short- and long-term memories called the Sensory
EgoSphere (SES) and the Procedural Memory (PM), respectively. The SES is a data
structure that encapsulates short-term memory for the humanoid in a time-varying,
spatially indexed database interfacing the environment with a geodesic hemisphere
[9]. It allows ISAC to maintain a spatially indexed map of relative sensory data in
its environment. PM is a data structure that encapsulates both primitive and meta
behaviors and forms a basis to learn new behaviors and tasks.
Figure 1. Vanderbilt's humanoid robot, ISAC.

> Read full chapter

INCLUDING DYNAMIC MODELLING

INTO THE OBJECT-ORIENTED DE-
SIGN
Hannelore Frank, Wolfgang Gerteis, in Dynamic Modelling of Information Systems,
1991

1 INTRODUCTION
The demand for ever higher integration of application software into computer
integrated manufacturing systems, distributed office automation systems, enter-
prise-wide information management systems etc. cannot sufficiently be met today,
as no adequate concepts for development and integration of distributed application
software are available.

To face this problem we believe that a synthesis of three large areas of com-
puter science is necessary: distributed programming, software engineering, and
object-oriented techniques.

The DOCASE project (distribution and objects in computer aided software engineer-
ing) intends to show the way towards environments, tools and languages appropriate
for the development of distributed applications (1, 2).

Object-oriented languages (3, 4) have proved to help managing complexity, a major

problem of distributed applications. The very few existing approaches to distributed
object-oriented programming have proved that a number of helpful concepts in
distributed programming can be easily introduced using the object paradigm (e.g.,
transparency of the underlying network structure). To support the design a language
covering the range from high level, incompletely specified early development phases
to low level, detailed description of software, has to be provided. A central goal
to DOCASE is to include modelling of application dynamics and animation of the
model into such a language. The seamless path from early to late phases and the
ease of maintenance make this approach very attractive.

This paper introduces an approach to use object-orientation to model requirements

in the DORL (DOCASE Requirements Language) and software in the DODL (DO-
CASE Design Language) with adjusted concepts for the modelling of dynamics of
the application system and tool supported transformation from DORL to DODL.

> Read full chapter

Introduction
Paul Valckenaers, Hendrik Van Brussel, in Design for the Unexpected, 2016

Once upon a time

Somewhere in the 1980s, the industrial automation community initiated the devel-
opment of computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) systems. These were systems
of systems aiming to integrate automated workstations into fully automated fac-
tories. In fact, this community was designing and developing systems of systems
before it became a popular topic in systems engineering. Unfortunately for industrial
automation, the results were underwhelming.

Within this setting, our research was looking for the root causes of the above. What
causes smaller systems, when integrated into a larger system of systems, to collide?
What makes it so hard to undo whatever is causing these collisions? Which aspects of
those difficulties are intrinsically inevitable? What can be done? Which properties of
an application domain (preconditions) allow us to remedy this undesirable situation?

At the outset, our expectation was to discover intrinsic limitations leading to a

conclusion that little could be done. This would nevertheless be valuable whenever
developers will avoid attempting the impossible (as an analogy of the second law
of thermodynamics versus the perpetuum mobile). In reality, the research findings
revealed to be quite the opposite. Although there are significant limitations, it
proved to be possible to design systems improving the present situation in a wide
range of application domains.
> Read full chapter

Automation, Control and Supervision

of Combined Heat and Power Systems
Jozef B. Lewoc, ... Slawomir Skowronski, in Improving Stability in Developing Na-
tions through Automation 2006, 2006

2.5 Supervision and Management Level

It is planned that the Supervision and Management Level (SML) will enable to
develop the Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Management (CIMM) systems
considered (by the engineering and managerial staff of heat and power generating
plants and other works (Franasik, 2001, Izworski, 2006)) as the necessary component
for optimum operation of the total plant. For this purpose, the HTTP processes in
the gateways may transfer data to the WWW servers (basically) and to the other SML
level subsystems. In addition, it is being investigated if it is feasible to employ at
SML some specialised expert systems, e.g. G2 (Gensym, 2003), intended towards
improvement of the working media production profitability.

> Read full chapter

Software Architectures and Tools for

Computer Aided Process Engineering
T.I. Malik, L. Puigjaner, in Computer Aided Chemical Engineering, 2002

2.2.5 INFORMATION FOR DECISION MAKING

2.2.5.1 Decision levels

In order to respond to new forces on the competitive landscape, manufacturing
companies are incorporating the Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) model
to meet today’s market needs.

The levels of decision for decision-making of CIM architectures are described in the
Purdue Reference Model represented in Figure 2.
Figure 2. A hierarchical computer control system structure for an industrial plant.-
From ISA-dS95.01-1999, Enterprise-Control System Integration. Part 1: Models and
Terminology.

2.2.5.2 Here and now decisions/wait and see decisions

One of the most widely used techniques for decision making under uncertainty
is two-stage stochastic programming. In this technique, the decision variables are
grouped in to two sets. The first-stage variables correspond to those decisions that
need to be made prior to resolution of uncertainty (“here and now” decisions).
Subsequently, based on these decisions and the realization of the random events the
second stage decisions are made subject to the constraints of the recourse problem.
Production decisions, because of their significant lead times, may be contemplated
in a here and now decisions scenario. Otherwise, supply-chain decisions can be
postponed on the basis of the production decisions and the realization of the
demand (wait and see).

2.2.5.3 Decision making and uncertainty

Uncertainty analysis might be incorporated at the different levels of decision-making
to improve the probability of performing the expected goals. Preventive mainte-
nance tasks may also be introduced to compensate the use of facilities with low
reliability indexes.
 As for batch processes, the production schedule has to satisfy the production re-
quirements under certain constraints, and, optimising an objective function usually
based on the expected plant profitability. Preventive maintenance increases the
plant reliability and, as a consequence, the production robustness. Therefore, batch
processes require simultaneous maintenance and production scheduling activity.

Basically, the evaluation of robustness of a schedule is based on the reliability of the

equipment unit assigned and of the possibility of finding an existing alternative unit
in the case that the unit initially assigned to a task becomes unavailable during the
schedule execution.

> Read full chapter

Control System Design

In Lees' Loss Prevention in the Process Industries (Third Edition), 2005

13.7.1 Batch plants

Batch processing involves not only sequential operations but also a high degree
of variability of equipment states and is particularly suited to CIM. Accounts of
integrated batch processing include those by Rosenof (1982b), Armstrong and Coe
(1983), Rippin (1983), Severns and Hedrick (1983), Bristol (1985), Krigman (1985),
Egli and Rippin (1986), Kondili, Panteides and Sargent (1988), Cott and Macchietto
(1989) and Crooks, Kuriyna and Macchietto (1992).

In the system described by Cott and Macchietto (1989), use is made of three levels
of control, which are, in descending order: plant level control, batch level control
and resource level control, operating respectively on typical time-scales of days,
minutes and seconds. A comprehensive approach to batch processing requires the
integration of tools for plant design, automation and operating procedures.

> Read full chapter

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