Introduction to CIM

Initially, machine tool automation started with the development of numerical control in the year 1950s. In less than 50 years, it is amazing that today's manufacturing plants are completely automated. Though, establishment of these plants gave relatively a few varieties of product. Initially we define what do we mean by a manufacturing plant? Here, we are considering a several categories of manufacturing (or production) for the various manufacturing plants.

Physical components of an automated manufacturing system do not include continuous flow process as this consists of a small percentage of manufacturing system only. Mass  production of discrete items is included in this category, where segments of production line are greatly automated but not the total line. Job shop facilities have utilized automated machines, but transfer of work among these machines is a difficult task. In spite of some physical equipment needed, a foremost component of the automated information that needs to be made available to the manufacturing operation must come from product design.

This permits a plant to be automated and integrated. Though, manufacturing is more concerned with process design instead of product design.The characteristic of present world market include higher competition, greater product diversity, short product life cycle, variety and complexity, fragmented market, and smaller batch sizes to satisfy a variety of customer profile. Furthermore, non price factors such like quality of product design innovation & delivery services are the preliminary determinant for the success of product. In today's global arena, to attain these needs manufacturing company needs to be flexible, adaptable and responsive to changes and be able to generate a variety of products in short time and at lower cost. These issues attract manufacturing industries to seek for some advanced technology that can overcome these difficulties. Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) that emerged in the year 1970, was the outcome of this protracted search.

CIM involves a basic strategy of integrating manufacturing facilities & systems in an enterprise through the computer and it's peripheral. CIM might be defined in different ways based upon its application. CIM involve integration of advanced technologies in various functional units of an enterprise, in an effective manner to attain the success of the manufacturing industries. A deep knowledge & understanding of all the technology is required for an effective integration. Initially integration of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) is needs to get success in the application of CIM. Computers behave as a subordinate to the technologies. Computers help, organize, and restore information in order to achieve high accuracy & speed. Their basic aim is to attain the goals of the objectives within restricted available capital. Traditionally, all the efforts were focused on achieving single goal to develop the effectiveness & competitiveness of the organization. But they failed because they didn't satisfy the total objectives of the manufacturing companies. Therefore, a multiple goal selection or multi criteria optimization is proposed to make the CIM an effective tool to develop the economy of the company. The new approach must be developed for improving the existing multi-criteria optimization mechanism, so that CIM might be realized globally. Additionally, global integration approach must be applied to make globally distributed company as a single entity. This concept is applied to make virtual CIM more effectual and therefore helps in meeting the present global economic circumstances by using intelligent manufacturing. Thus, manufacturing technology should be blended with intelligence. It will help manufacturing enterprise to produce better quality. This will also facilitate the manufacturing equipments to solve problems posed throughout normal course of the operations.

Computer technology is the necessary input to implement automation in manufacturing system. The term CIM denotes the widespread use of computer systems to design the product, to plan the production, control the operation, and perform the business related functions required in the manufacturing firm. True CIM includes integration of these functions in the system that operates throughout the enterprise. Other words are used to identify specific element of the CIM system. For instance, computer aided design (CAD) denotes the use of computer system to support the product design system. Computer aided manufacturing (CAM) denotes the use of computer system to perform the functions related to manufacturing engineering, such as process planning and numerically controlled (NC) part programming. Some computer system performs the CAD and CAM, and so the term CAD/CAM is used to indicate the integration of the two systems into one. Additionally to CAD/CAM, CIM also includes the firm business function that is associated to manufacturing.