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In today’s competitive international business environment, companies are calling for new approaches to anufacturing. Also, the growth in computer-based technology during the 1980s, coupled with the emergence of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) and just-in-time (JIT) inventory control forced movement away from the traditional product focused manufacturing paradigms of the mass-production era to that of a process-focused paradigm. Through the use of various computer-aided technologies, computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) attempts to pull all of the functional areas of a business into a cohesive, interconnected, interactive, self-aware whole. CIM includes such activities as product/process design, manufacturing technology, material acquisition, information resource management and total quality management. CIM utilizes enterprise-wide computer-aided technologies to maintain quality, speed new product development, minimize costs and maximize flexibility to respond to ever-changing customer desires. Thus, the competitive advantage of CIM in industry comes from its ability to:
- Develop a large quantity of new products quickly;
- Produce small production runs of custom-made items efficiently; and
- Maximize the flexibility of the manufacturer in responding quickly to changes in the environment.
Barriers to CIM Adoption
Despite all the money, energy, and time spent by companies trying to automate their factory, CIM is still an unfulfilled promise for many. Managers have continually struggled with the problem of successfully putting the pieces together to get the most out of CIM technology. In the past few years, several surveys have attempted to investigate the problem and identify the primary obstacles to more rapid adoption of CIM technology. Some of the findings are identified below.
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Participants