Source: Textile Review


ComputerIntegrated manufacturing (CIM) uses computers to control the entire productionprocess that involves engineering, production, marketing and all the supportfunctions of a manufacturing enterprise. In the traditional business paradigm,the company is assumed as an island, i.e., an independent and self operatingentity. As a company is a part of a broader matrix of business systems composedof customers, suppliers, products and global information, it leads tointegration along different axes, namely geographical and functional. Its mainobjective is streamlining the process of manufacturing and integrating it withall the other business functions such as financing, marketing and accounting.To eliminate the wastage, basic manufacturing functions as well as materialshandling and inventory control can be simulated by computers. Nowadays thereare many simulation softwares available for different applications where it isnot so easy to conduct real time experiments on the real applications. Thecompanies which are centered and vertically integrated cannot easily adapt tothe fast requirements of changes in the market. For the companies to be moreefficient they need to be global and at the same time local, they should beable to operate in a coordinated as well as synchronized form and should beable to adapt to changing market conditions. The management has to make adecision to make a product based on market opportunities, the company'sstrength and weakness and its strategic plan based on competitive advantage.Some of the tasks in general that a CIM has to perform includes defining theproblem, developing functional, information, network organizational models andfinally implementation.


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Originally published in Textile Review, Feb-2011


The authors areassociated with Dept. of Computer Science School of Computer Science andEngineering, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore.