Date: 4th Jan 2016
To: Roser Prado, Managing Director
Subject: Report on importance of CIM (computer integrated manufacturing) to our company due to current advancement of Information Technology.
Dear Sir,
I was requested to prepare a report on CIM (computer integrated manufacturing) system and its importance to multi-national company like us.
It was total pleasure to me on investigation of CIM system. I have mentioned all the required information about CIM on this particular report.
Computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) is simply a useful computer technique that integrates manufacturing activities efficiently. The manufacturing activities performed by CIM comprise all necessary functions and translate customer needs to a final project. CIM starts with product requirement analysis and put those requirements for product design. CIM systems have emerged as a result of the developments in manufacturing and computer technology.
I am hopeful that the report I submitted you will enhance you taking the positive decision. If any confusion arises or if you do not get the part of report, I will always be available in the office hour. However, it will be great cheer to me if you consider this report.
Yours sincerely
Santosh Yadav
Ref No.: MNC/SM-789
Date: 4th Jan 2012
To: Roser Prado, Managing Director
From: Santosh Yadav, Scenior Manager
Subject: Report on importance of CIM (computer integrated manufacturing) to our company due to current advancement of Information Technology.
Introduction
This is the report about the importance of CIM. The report abstracts findings of my hard work (investigation) over past few months with absolute recommendations, as requested by Mr. Dexter Morgan, Assistant Product Manager. In late 1980s, machine tool manufacturers promoted CIM which tends to be helpful in encompassing entire range of products, its development and development activities by carrying out all functions with just the help of dedicated software packages. It includes CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing), CAPP (computer-aided process planning), CNC (computer numerical control machine tools), and DNC (direct numerical control machine tools). CIM uses a common database and communication technologies. This helps to integrate design, manufacturing and business system. With CIM, tasks can be carried out with great speed, low budget and error free output.
Findings
Manufacturing Engineers has defined some of the objectives that they need to compete in the global market. The objectives are summarized below in points.
• Maintain record
• Minimize product cost
• Garbage reduction
• Quality improvement
Challenges defined by Manufacturing Engineers:
• Poor database management
• Increase flexibility to product changes
• Increase flexibility to production changes
• Increase flexibility to process changes
The above mentioned challenges and objectives defined by Manufacturing Engineers can be met by CIM technology.
CIM Hardware
CIM Hardware includes the following:
• Manufacturing equipment like storage devices, sensors, computerized work centers, inspection machines etc
• CAD/CAM system, computers, workstations/terminals, modems, cables, printers, bar code readers and other peripherals.
CIM Software
CIM has several software tools for various kind of business purpose.
• Management Information System
• Sales
• Marketing
• Finance
• Database Management
• Modeling and Design
• Analysis
• Simulation
• Communications
• Monitoring
• Production Control
• Manufacturing Area Control
• Job Tracking
• Inventory Control
• Order Entry
• Materials Handling
• Process Planning
• Manufacturing Facilities Planning
• Work Flow Automation
• Business Process Engineering
• Network Management
• Quality Management
Elements of CIM
Some major elements of CIM are:
• Marketing
Marketing Division identifies the need of product in market place. Product requirements and the projection of product are figured by marketing division. Marketing department also works on cost estimation which is feasible to customers.
• Product design
Product design with CIM system is done with geometric modeling and computer aided design considering the product requirements and ideas suggested by design engineers.
• Finance
Finance deals with budgetary involvement such as planning of investment, working capital, and cash flow control, realization of receipts, accounting and allocation of funds are the major tasks of the finance departments.
• Planning
Planning involves several subsystems dealing with materials, facility, process, tools, manpower, capacity, scheduling, outsourcing, assembly, inspection, logistics etc.
• Purchase
The purchase departments is responsible for placing the purchase orders and follow up, ensure quality in the production process of the vendor, receive the items, arrange for inspection and supply the items to the stores or arrange timely delivery depending on the production schedule for eventual supply to manufacture and assembly.
• Manufacturing
Manufacturing Engineering is the activity of carrying out the production of the product, involving further enrichment of the database with performance data and information about the production equipment and processes. In CIM, this requires activities like CNC programming, simulation and computer aided scheduling of the production activity.
• Automated work centers
Factory automation equipment further enriches the database with equipment and process data, resident either in the operator or the equipment to carry out the production process.
• Ware-House
Warehousing is the function involving storage and retrieval of raw materials, components, finished goods as well as shipment of items. In today’s complex outsourcing scenario and the need for just-in-time supply of components and subsystems, logistics and supply chain management assume great importance.
• Information
Information Management is perhaps one of the crucial tasks in CIM. This involves master production scheduling, database management, communication, manufacturing systems integration and management information systems.
CIM BENEFITS
A research made by U.S. National Research Council shows that CIM uplifts production productivity by about 40 to 70 percent. The research also reflects that CIM decreases design cost by 20 to 30 percent. It is also seen that CIM reduce overall lead time by 30 to 60 percent. Managers who prefer CIM believes that it has direct relationship between efficiency of information management and effectiveness of manufacturing enterprise. The table below shows the benefits of CIM in brief.
CIM provides several benefits to CIM manager, development manager, applications programmer, system integrator, standard developer, and process engineer. These benefits are listed below.
Benefits with respect to CIM manager:
• CIM which also have manufacturing application enables “buy versus build” decisions.
• CIM also provides modular applications.
• In-house development is minimized.
• Enable to make changes to those applications that do not perform properly.
Benefits with respect to development manager:
• The opportunity to focus on site-specific capability.
• Purchased applications are supported to be outsourced.
Benefits with respect to application programmer:
• Focus on functionality of new applications.
• Not needed to “reinvent the wheel”.
• Provides opportunity to focus on assembly of components.
Benefits with respect to systems integrator:
• Enable to focus on system services instead of application functionality.
• They do not need to customize well defined interfaces and can reuse integration code.
Benefits with respect to standard developer:
• Identifies component boundaries.
• Can view detail description of complete factory characteristics.
Benefits with respect to process engineer:
• Integrated CIM environment.
• Easy access to manufacturing data.
• Provides decision making and control practices.
Functional Scope
CIM components Application area
Factory Services • Document management
• Version management
• History management
• Event broker
Factory Management • Factory
• Product release
• Factory operations
• Product release
Factory Labor • Person management
• Skill management
Machine Control • Machine management
• Recipe management
• Resource tracking
Material Management • Product management
• Durable management
• Consumable management
• Inventory region
• Product specification
• Bill of material
Material Movement • Material movement
Advance Process Control • Plug-in management
• Plug-in execution
• Control management
• Control execution
• Control database
• Data collection plan
Process Specification Management • Process Specification
• Process capability
Schedule Management • Dispatching
Recommendations
Being a senior manager of “Real Soft Drink” enterprise, I would like to suggest following recommendations.
• Manual functioning should be replaced by introducing CIM system.
• That manufacturing engineers should be trained about CIM functioning.
• Sales and marketing manager should be informed about CIM.
• That human resource manager to make all employees the efficiency of CIM.
• That marketing department should notice customer view of point.
Conclusion:
After all the hard work of investigation, I finally came to following conclusions:
• The equipment or machines we are working with to ensure customer order is insufficient.
• Sometimes we are not being able to reach the order in time.
• CIM system is sure to overcome all pitfalls of our company.
• All staff members willing to introduce CIM system which can enhance the level of effort of human work.
• The attitude of various workers is far from satisfaction.
• CIM system seems to be effective for all departments such as marketing, production, finance etc.
References:
i. Cagle, E. "Awaiting the Big Payoff." Printing Impressions 47, no. 6 (November 2004): 54â56.
ii. Kusiak, Andrew. Intelligent Manufacturing Systems. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990.
iii. Mahmood, T. "Real-time Computer Integrated Manufacturing." Circuits Assembly 6, no. 3 (March 1995): 58â60.
iv. Rehg, James A., and Henry W. Kraebber. Computer Integrated Manufacturing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.
