CIM—the integration of manufacturing and information systems

The integration of computers within the manufacturing environment has long been a method of enhancing productivity. Their use in many facets of a manufacturing enterprise has given industries the ability to deliver low-cost, high-quality competitive products. As computer technology advances, we find more and more uses for new hardware and software in the enterprise. Over a period of time, we have seen many “islands” of computer integration. Distinct, fully functional hardware and software installations are a common base for many industries. Unfortunately, these islands are just that, separate, distinct and functional but non-integrated. The lack of integration within these information systems make it difficult for end users to see the same manufacturing data. We are finding the need for a “single image” real-time information system to provide the enterprise with the data that is required to plan, justify, design, manufacture and deliver products to the customer. Unfortunately, many industries have a large installed base of hardware and software. Replacement of current systems is not a cost-justified business decision. An alternative would be the migration of current systems to a more integrated solution. The migration to a computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM)-based architecture would provide that single image real-time information system.

The effort and skills necessary for the implementation of a CIM-based architecture would require active participation from two key organizations: Manufacturing and information systems (I/S). The manufacturing engineers, process engineers and other manufacturing resource would be the cornerstone for obtaining requirements. The ability to effectively use I/S is a critical success factor in the implementation of CIM. I/S has to be viewed as an equal partner, not just as a service organization. Manufacturing management needs to understand the justification process of integrating computer systems and the “real” cost of integration versus the cost of non-integrated manufacturing systems. The active participation of both organizations during all phases of CIM implementation will result in a effective and useful integrated information system.     

The Value of Outsourcing: A Field Study

This article examines the effects of information systems outsourcing on the business processes of organizations. Rather than simply comparing outsourcing and not outsourcing, the study also addresses a third and increasingly common strategy, that of using software purchased “off-the-shelf.” An extensive survey was distributed to business process managers over a cross-section of financial services processes and companies. Results show that outsourcing information systems can create lower overall process costs and may lead to superior overall process performance compared to processes that used software purchased off-the-shelf. Further, information systems built in house lead to superior overall process performance compared to processes that used software purchased off-the-shelf. These results should assist business managers in gauging the possible effects of outsourcing information systems (or not) on their core processes.     

Information process flow analysis (IPFA) for reengineering manufacturing systems

Automated manufacturing lines, aircraft, unclear power plants, and similar real-time intelligent or embedded systems contain three control elements: (1) embedded computers, (2) humans-in-the-loop, and (3) certain machines, i.e., mechanically, electrically, or electronically operated devices. Embedded system control elements are interconnected through accurate, precisely-timed, closed-loop information systems to provide high quality products and/or services from their parent systems, and in some cases to ensure human safety. Highly-reliable controlling computers and associated software embedded in time- and safety-critical systems that compensate for possible human and/or machine error are especially difficult to design and develop, or “forward engineer”. Reengineering embedded control elements in old systems is even more troublesome, especially when they require re-manufacturing, e.g., nuclear power plant refueling, aircraft avionics system upgrading, or manufacturing plant retooling.

This paper describes how industrial engineers can assist in reengineering worn out, error prone, or obsolescent real-time manufacturing systems (embedded systems) by helping computer systems and communication engineers ensure that critical information control loops, both feed forward and feed back, are complete and efficient. Two conceptual models, the Embedded Computer System (ECS) physical model and the Object Transformation Process Model (OTPM) are used to guide a modified process flow analysis (PFA) of existing large-scale, complex embedded systems that takes into account process-supporting information. This modified PFA is called an Information Process Flow Analysis (IPFA).     

Architectural requirements for rapid development of agile manufacturing systems

As product life cycle becomes shortened, high product quality becomes necessary for survival, and continuous and unexpected change becomes key obstacles in success, the need for a method of rapidly and cost-effectively developing products, production facilities and supporting software including design, process planning, shop floor control systems becomes urgent. The essence of this concept of manufacturing would be characterized by adopting a new term “agility”. Agile manufacturing can be successfully accomplished using various well-defined system architecture. This paper provides a primary sketch of architectural requirements for rapid development of agile manufacturing systems.There are several aspects of system architecture : control, function, process, information, communication, distribution, development, and implementation.In the past, the confusion of those architectures prohibited the successful construction of the automated CIM systems.     

Manufacturing control systems: An approach to reducing software costs

Real-time control systems are expensive to develop and few of them operate properly when first delivered. Much of the development cost can be attributed to errors which are made in the early phases of the software development. These are often the hardest to detect and the most expensive to correct. The use of explicit models to test the consequences of design alternatives holds promise for reducing this problem. Simulation of both the physical and control systems provides the explicit models necessary not only to detect logical errors but also to examine the complex, dynamic relationships of control design decisions. Simulation with the “Activity Cycle” approach uses directed graphs to depict system logic for ease of comprehension and provides a one-to-one correspondence between the simulation and the desired manufacturing control system software. The use of Activity Cycle based design and simulation methods has the potential to reduce substantially the risks and costs involved in the construction of manufacturing control system software.     

Analysis of “Salary man” motivation and the will to work (YARUKI)

The Inner Graphic Formula Method (IGF) which was originally conceived by Professor Ishiketa and further developed by him and his associates was used to investigate the motivation of new company employees.

Japanese companies traditionally recruit new employees from senior classes and notify successful candidates of their intention to employ them around the first of January. Since graduation is in March, April first is, then, the first day of work for almost all of these graduates in their new companies.

The investigation period for this study covers the eleven months from January until the middle of November, and therefore includes the three month period after notification but prior to actual work, from January first until March thirty-first, and the first eight month of actual work, from April first to the middle of November. The subjects fell, naturally, into two groups; a “Blue Collar” group and a “White Collar” group.

This paper deals with the motivation of these newly employed workers in general and, specifically, with the difference in motivational tendencies between “Blue Collar” and “White Collar” workers. As expected analysis showed that clear motivational differences appeared.

Motivation in the white collar workers tended to raise after an initial downturn, while a general downward trend was detected for the blue collar workers. White collar worker's attitudes toward themselves and toward their work seemed to change for the better as a result of having the chance to become introspective while plotting the graph and writing the anecdotal responses needed to complete the investigative sheet for this study.     

The “cognitive car”: A roadmap for research issues in the automotive sector

The numbers of cars on roads are increasing continuously. Consequently, streets and motorways are becoming more and more crowded and the risk of accidents is rising. In spite of the fact that in recent years cars have been made more efficient and capable, the driver behind the wheel is often overburdened with traffic situations. Therefore, scientists and engineers are challenged to develop a car which is safer and less stress-burdened than today. This paper outlines some future developments of such a more autonomous car within the next 15 years. The approach describes the roadmap for this “cognitive car” suggested by RWTH Aachen University.     

Software “engineer”? Time will tell

A discussion is given on the legal and policy aspects of information technology use and development in the US. There is a continuing proliferation of individuals and companies who portray themselves as being or employing software “gurus”, “experts” and “engineers”-titles that imply the knowledge and capability to resolve programming problems. Many of these individuals either lack these skills and experience or are applying their knowledge in environments where it has no value. This problem is particularly acute in the area of telephony or data/software/telecommunications convergence. There are signs, however, that your ability to describe yourself as an engineer or your company's services as engineering, without proper training and certification, may be coming to an end     

A geoscience perspective on immersive 3D gridded data visualization

We describe visualization software, Visualizer, that was developed specifically for interactive, visual exploration in immersive virtual reality (VR) environments. Visualizer uses carefully optimized algorithms and data structures to support the high frame rates required for immersion and the real-time feedback required for interactivity. As an application developed for VR from the ground up, Visualizer realizes benefits that usually cannot be achieved by software initially developed for the desktop and later ported to VR. However, Visualizer can also be used on desktop systems (unix/linux-based operating systems including Mac OS X) with a similar level of real-time interactivity, bridging the “software gap” between desktop and VR that has been an obstacle for the adoption of VR methods in the Geosciences. While many of the capabilities of Visualizer are already available in other software packages used in a desktop environment, the features that distinguish Visualizer are: (1) Visualizer can be used in any VR environment including the desktop, GeoWall, or CAVE, (2) in non-desktop environments the user interacts with the data set directly using a wand or other input devices instead of working indirectly via dialog boxes or text input, (3) on the desktop, Visualizer provides real-time interaction with very large data sets that cannot easily be viewed or manipulated in other software packages. Three case studies are presented that illustrate the direct scientific benefits realized by analyzing data or simulation results with Visualizer in a VR environment. We also address some of the main obstacles to widespread use of VR environments in scientific research with a user study that shows Visualizer is easy to learn and to use in a VR environment and can be as effective on desktop systems as native desktop applications.     

Transaction exchange management systems for successful systems integration

The objective of this paper is to discuss the strategy to be taken by computerized information system managers and developers in the evolving era of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM). Specifically, more concentration should be directed towards a standardized methodology for the management and handling of the transaction data which flows between two or more systems, rathr than upon the hardware and software technology used to “connect” those systems.     

Internet Technologies for Improving Data Access

The term “Internet technologies” has recently been coined to describe a set of software capabilities aimed at improving data communications and data access in contemporary enterprise information systems. This article presents a framework for implementing Internet technologies to improve enterprisewide data access, particularly in terms of the user interface, communications networking, the application platform, and the hardware operating systems platform. Examples of software products are given to illustrate how Internet technologies affect these platforms.     

E-manufacturing—fundamental, tools, and transformation

Manufacturing industry worldwide has been facing unprecedented challenges brought by ever changing, global and competitive market conditions as well as changing social demands, regional, governmental and environmental regulations. E-commerce and Internet technologies injected “velocity” into the front business activities and enabled companies to shift their manufacturing operations from the traditional factory integration philosophy to a supply chain-based e-factory philosophy. It transforms companies from a local factory focus to a global enterprise and business focus.

This paper introduces e-manufacturing as a new concept to answer the aforementioned needs of business strategies for complete integration of all business elements including suppliers, customer service network and manufacturing units by leveraging the Internet, web-enabling, tether-free technologies and computational tools. Enabling tools will be introduced to support e-manufacturing includes the ability to monitor the plant floor assets, and predict the variation and performance loss for dynamic rescheduling of production and maintenance operations, and synchronize with other related business actions to achieve a complete integration between manufacturing systems and upper-level enterprise applications. Finally, infotronics technologies for next-generation e-manufacturing transformation are discussed.     

MCS

The largest, most advanced CAD/CAM software package available to industry . . . an integrated design, management information and manufacturing system. It provides the capabilities for engineers to fully automate the design and manufacturing of a product.     

A Calculus for “environment-aware” computation

We present a calculus for modelling “environment-aware” computations, that is computations that adapt their behaviour according to the capabilities of the environment. The calculus is an imperative, object-based language with extensible objects, equipped with a labelled transition semantics. A notion of bisimulation, lifting to computations a correspondence between the capabilities of different environments, is provided. Bisimulation can be used to prove that a program is “cross-environment”, i.e., it has the same behaviour when run in different environments.     

The UniSet approach for the programming of flexible manufacturing cells

Flexible manufacturing cells (FMC) may be considered the most significant development in small-batch manufacturing. Setting-up and operating costs of FMC prove to be the most major hindrance to their large-scale implementation and use, particularly by small and medium size industries. Incompatibilities between the different components constituting the cells and the lack of a unified language/approach to programming and coordinating them are cited as the cause of the complexity of setting up and subsequently operating the cells. In order to eliminate these difficulties, a new philosophy for setting-up, programming and control of FMC has been developed. This paper reports the effort to develop this new unified manufacturing instruction set and its environment, called here “UniSet”, its philosophy and some of the components of the UniSet environment. UniSet has been developed as a non-exclusive unified manufacturing instruction set, based on comparisons of the prevailing machine tool and programming primitives. UniSet allows programmers to deal with only one instruction set, if they so desire, in a single coherent environment, rather than numerous machine programming languages. The software system is coded in an object-oriented programming (OOP) language, Smalltalk, and derives its paradigm from the OO philosophy. Test results are also included to demonstrate the applicability of the approach employed.     

A computer integrated business control system for an SME

CIM technology — appropriate to the requirements of an SME specialising in the manufacture of mechanical actuation systems — was introduced as a low-cost phased implementation of software and hardware systems that exploit a database to integrate its design, manufacturing and business operations. The company's investments were based on a prudent assessment of its current and planned product range, existing and planned manufacturing facilities, the scale of its operations and business objectives. The impact of this manufacturing control system on the business operations of the company and its influence on the evolution of its product range are discussed.     

Developing technologies for broad-network concurrent computing

Recent developments in networking infrastructures, computer workstation capabilities, software tools, and programming languages have motivated new approaches to broad-network concurrent computing. This paper describes extensions to concurrent computing which blend new and evolving technologies to extend users' access to resources beyond their local network. The result is a concurrent programming environment which can dynamically extend over network and file system boundaries to envelope additional resources, to enable multiple-user collaborative programming, and to achieve a more optimal process mapping. Additional aspects of the derivative environment feature extended portability and support for the accessing of legacy codes and packages. This paper describes the advantages of such a design and how they have been implemented in the environment termed “IceT”.     

…On the direct programming of CNC milling equipment

This paper discusses the use of expert software which directly programs Computer Numerical Control (CNC) milling equipment from engineering style Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) drawings. Currently available software provides only semi-automatic programming based upon strict drawing format, user selected tools and user supplied tool path information. (DPS) derives part feature, tool selection, and tool path from “loosely” specified CAD drawings without direct user control. Other CNC programming methods are error prone and are slow to produce accurate CNC programs. The new technology eliminates programming error and completes processing in seconds rather than hours or days, thus providing for a true Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) environment. DPS is in use on various 2D and 3D milling environments as well as on several types of small or personal computers and CAD systems. Additional systems and environments can be supported. DPS is designed to operate efficiently with AutoDesk, Inc.'s AutoCAD and Hewlett Packard 9000/320 ME-10 (HP-UX) based drawings. An additional implementation is running on SCO XENIX/386.

This paper presents technology and productivity improvements for various classes of DPS systems available today. Examples of actual use, productivity improvements and product dependencies are discussed and illustrated.     

Towards gesture-based programming: shape from motion primordial learning of sensorimotor primitives

Gesture-based programming (GBP) is a paradigm for the evolutionary programming of dextrous robotic systems by human demonstration. We call the paradigm “gesture-based” because we try to capture, in real-time, the intention behind the demonstratrator's fleeting, context-dependent hand motions, contact conditions, finger poses, and even cryptic utterances, rather than just recording and replaying movement. The paradigm depends on a pre-existing knowledge base of capabilities, collectively called “encapsulated expertise”, that comprise the real-time sensorimotor primitives from which the run-time executable is constructed as well as providing the basis for interpreting the teacher's actions during programming. In this paper we first describe the GBP environment, which is not fully implemented. We then present a technique based on principal components analysis, augmentable with model-based information, for learing and recognizing sensorimotor primitives. This paper describes simple applications of the technique to a small mobile robot and a PUMA manipulator. The mobile robot learned to escape from jams while the manipulator learned guarded moves and rotational accommodation that are composable to allow flat plate mating operations. While these initial applications are simple, they demonstrate the ability to extract primitives from demonstration, recognize the learned primitives in subsequent demonstrations, and combine and transform primitives to create different capabilities, which are all critical to the GBP paradigm.     

The robotics experience

The classical engineering fields have evolved standards and techniques for developing complex systems. For example, both mechanical and electrical engineers have a wide variety of standard components, with defined capabilities, that they can draw upon (e.g., gears, transistors) in the design of complex systems. On the other hand, software engineering has struggled with the basic idea of reusability. Software engineering approaches, such as the use of components [1] that promote the concept of information hiding [2] and the introduction of structured programming languages [3], offer a roadmap to an improved software reuse. Unfortunately, their adoption by robotics researchers has been slow, impeded by the tradition of individual research groups crafting independent and incompatible solutions to common problems.