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A proposed framework and a survey of research issues in manufacturing information systems
Pergamon
Computerx ind. Engng Vo|. 28, No. 3, pp. 513-522, 1995 Copyright © 1995 Ehcvict Science Ltd 0360-8352(94)00206-1 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0360-8352/95 $9,50 + 0.00
A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK AND A SURVEY RESEARCH ISSUES IN MANUFACTURING INFORMATION SYSTEMS
OF
SAEID MOTAVALLI, ~ MOHAMMAD DADASHZADEH2t and MOHAMMAD TAGHAVI-FARD I ~Department of Industrial Engineering and 2Department of Decision Sciences, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS 67260, U.S.A. AImtrlct--We present a framework for considering research issues in manufacturing information systems. The framework is derived from the CIM Architeeture proposed by the Advanced Technical Planning Committee of Computer Aided Manufacturing-lnternational Inc., and addresses organizational, architectural, and infrastructural issues. We also survey recent literature on manufacturing information systems and characterize the works in light of the proposed framework.
1. INTRODUCTION
In Technology 2001, McBride and Brown [1] point out that in the 1990s, time is the ultimate source of competitive advantage and that the information system is the key to attaining this advantage. "Time-based competition requires on-line access to information throughout an organization, from order-entry, to purchasing, to engineering, to production, to shipping, to service," they write. "Eventually, the entire enterprise will be on-line." In At America's Service, Albrecht [2] designates a customer's contacts with a service organization as moments of truth for the quality of service received from the organization. Such moments of truth must be extended in a manufacturing concern, to include the physical activities used to transform raw materials into finished products. As pointed out by Marchand [3], this focus on the activities that affect the corresponding quality of the service and the product requires a substantially different view of organizational structures and practices. They suggest that the traditional, pyramidal organizational structure be abandoned in favor of an informationbased organizational structure which would tend to be flatter and more responsive, emphasizing horizontal, interfunctional coordination of tasks and managerial support of workers. In this context, priority is placed on information sharing among workers and functions in an on-line basis. The requirements of an on-line manufacturing organization are many. Figure l (adapted from [4-7]) depicts the necessary integration of production planning and control, computer-aided design and manufacturing, customer order servicing, quality assurance and control, purchasing and receiving and inventory management which must all be connected together with uniform data management and communication. In such an on-line organization, operational data must be delivered to workgroups and their applications, on-demand, and in the form in which it will be used. The need to transmit data rapidly to its point of use, the need to share information across applications, and the need to support non-traditional, storage intensive, data such as images, graphics, voice, and video in an information repository which must accommodate all types of data; combined with the managerial concerns for data integrity, security, availability, reliability, and effectiveness on the one hand, and planning and organizational change implementation, on the other, have made manufacturing information systems a daunting challenge and a fertile area of research. tTo w h o m correspondence should be addressed.
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The Advanced Technical Planning Committee (ATPC) of Computer Aided ManufacturingInternational Inc. (CAM-I) [8-11] has presented what can be considered a conceptual guideline for developing a Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) system. According to their proposed guideline, the functional elements for developing a CIM system consist of an organization's management structure, function/activity structure, information structure, physical structure, and computer systems structure. These functional elements are, of course, present in most manufacturing organizations. What may be absent, however, is the necessary relationships between these functional elements. Figure 2 depicts what the ATPC considers
Inter-Organizational Linkage/Systems • EDI • Design Outsourcing • Rapid P r o t o t y p i n g
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to be the required influence relationships between these functional elements in building a CIM architecture. What is specially remarkable about the ATPC's deceptively simple model is that the absence of a required linkage or the reversal of the direction of an influence relationship become the subtle explanations for failure of CIM implementations. For example, when the information structure does not influence the function/activity structure, opportunities for data representation and consistency checking across functions in a CIM system may easily go unnoticed. Therefore, we believe that the ATPC model not only serves as a conceptual guideline for developing a CIM architecture, but it can also serve as a starting point to categorize research threads in manufacturing
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information systems. Specifically, we propose in Fig. 3, the mapping between the functional elements of a CIM architecture and the research threads in manufacturing information systems, and discuss these research issues in greater detail in the following subsections.
2.1. Organizational research issues What are the organizational contingencies for successful CIM implementation? Answers to this research question are being sought through case studies of both success and failure in CIM implementation, as well as by formulating hypotheses encompassing the following three organizational variables: (1) Creating organizational support. Introducing CIM in an organization is difficult, requiring the company to restructure and change many long-standing manufacturing practices and philosophies. Some companies try to introduce new technology solely by management edict. Unfortunately, without grassroots support, mandated technology may be embraced in name only. Successful technological change occurs when senior management leads the migration by establishing goals and dedicating resources, driving the process from the top down. Top management must convince middle management that the new system is essential to corporate strategy and survival. Middle management must in turn persuade supervisors and factory floor workers of the same, even to the extent of guaranteeing the retraining of those whose jobs will be changed or eliminated by CIM. (2) Planning for manufacturing information systems. Technological change must begin with the recognition that problems serious enough to warrant change do exist. However, once it is recognized that change is necessary, many managers and most technical people opt for immediate action. Although such a bias for action is laudable, the road to CIM is fraught with pitfalls and misconceptions that only thorough planning and careful formulation of organizational objectives for manufacturing information systems can help avoid. When a company introduces automation without examining the suitability of their products and manufacturing techniques for automation, or identifying the inefficiencies built into their existing systems, the desired improvements in productivity, cost, and quality will not be achieved. Similarly, when a company strictly adheres to a return on investment criterion for prioritizing projects, the necessary CIM applications targeting integration of data and communication, which do not individually produce high returns but are vital to a long-term integrated solution, may continue to be delayed for want of a long-term planning orientation. (3) Technology management. CIM requires proper technology management based on the specific needs and objectives of the organization. Without proper management, technology implementations can easily turn out to be cost ineffective at best and enslaving the organization at worst. Walford [12] proposes that the principal ongoing concern of technology-oriented coordination, planning, and decision making should be to use the proper technologies at the proper time in both the products and services produced and the tools and methodologies employed to develop those products and services. Without proper assessment of what the technology is capable of providing, how the technology may then influence changes to the organization's products or services and/or the fundamental business strategies that the company follows, and what the enterprise needs from technology, the adoption of new technologies may lead to an organization that is a slave of its technology, rather than its master [12].
2.2. Architectural research issues Today, no manufacturing company of even modest size can operate without support from information technology. But, at a time when manufacturing is increasing its dependence on information technology, technology is changing so rapidly that businesses are threatened by its pace. New developments arise before older ones can be assimilated, and systems purchased today are, at times, outdated even before they are put into use. The solution that emerged in late 1980s to deal effectively with the rapid pace of change in information technology is to build an information architecture. The manufacturing information systems architect, however, must often pay dearly for the mistakes of the past. Information systems, like buildings and streets, have had a tendency to grow haphazardly. As in a building, we do not
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like to break down an "outside wall", but, if we cannot modify the inside walls to make the architecture useful for today's context (i.e. information needs), then there is no other choice. A well-planned manufacturing information architecture should, as much as possible, obviate the need for the demolition of outside walls [13]. In Fig. ! we have depicted a model manufacturing information architecture founded on providing infrastructures for communication integration as well as data integration and emphasizing four types of application portfolios: (1) information systems applications directed at operations management; (2) information systems applications directed at engineering design and problem solving; (3) information systems applications directed at physical automation on the factory floor; and (4) information systems applications directed at linking the firm with its suppliers, customers, or other firms. It is important to note that while the model acknowledges that the application portfolios must address the entire value chain of a manufacturing concern from inbound logistics, to operations, to outbound logistics, to sales, and to service, it does not point out the nature of the required information. Similarly, although the model advocates data and communication integration, it neither assumes a particular hardware or software architectural platform, nor advocates a centralized or decentralized approach to building the architecture. Those degrees of freedom are left to the eventual architect who must fit the suggested architectural form to the specific context of the organization. Architectural research issues in manufacturing information systems therefore address these two degrees of freedom. Specifically, what is the nature of required manufacturing information and in what manner to achieve the desired level of integration. With regard to the former question researchers have addressed: (a) the overall definition of manufacturing information; (b) domainspecific manufacturing information (e.g. for electrical component products); and (c) the nature of manufacturing knowledge bases needed to complement manufacturing databases. In relation to the latter question, solutions have been proposed based on: (a) a centralized integrated database architecture; (b) a distributed integrated database architecture based on homogeneous database management systems (including client/server variations); (c) a distributed integrated database architecture based on heterogeneous database management systems; and (d) an unintegrated architecture relying on import/export interfaces.
2.3. Infrastructural research issues Integrated manufacturing databases, as viewed from a traditional, commercial database management perspective, still remain somewhat of an uncharted territory [14]. The reason is that merely gluing a database management system to a set of existing tools (such as CAD) is not a solution [15]. The major integration problem to be solved is to provide consistent transaction propagation across representations [16]. That is, when a design engineer modifies a part drawing in a CAD application, the ramifications of this update transaction on NC programs, bill of materials, process plans, inventory management, cost accounting, order processing, etc., should at least be understood and ideally be automatically propagated. The following areas of research are being investigated in order to develop the necessary tools and technical infrastructures for implementation of manufacturing information systems: (1) Data modeling. What is an appropriate conceptual data model for representing manufacturing information? Although the entity-relationship (E-R) data model [17] and its close kin, the relational data model, have proved to be successful in supporting standard business data modeling, they appear to be inadequate for modeling the levels of abstraction that is quintessential to modeling design data. A variety of extensions to existing data models as well as new data models have been proposed to support the conceptual modeling process for manufacturing information systems. (2) Feature-based access and manipulation. Regardless of the manner in which design data is stored in the database, access to, and manipulation of, design data must be feature-based. For example, even when an electrical circuit in an equipment is represented as the collection of wires, components, and the associated properties, it should be possible for a user or application to refer to that electrical circuit as a logical group and manipulate it directly. Such feature-based access
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and manipulation (or, object-orientation) capacity is being fervently pursued by both CAD and DBMS developers. (3) Specification and enforcement of integrity constraints. Integrity constraints, e.g. one specifying permissible ranges for the 3-dimensional coordinates of a point in a CAD drawing, limit the possible values in a database state. Such integrity constraints must ideally be a declarative component of design database definition and should be automatically enforced by the design database management system. Unfortunately, commercial database management systems are quite deficient in this regard even for relatively simple types of integrity constraints. Much more complex constraints such as "the circuit must behave as specified" or that "the door assembly must fit on the airplane" require revamping of our approach to specification and enforcement of integrity constraints for manufacturing information systems. (4) Integration of database and knowledge base processing. "In the factory of the future, there will be a flurry of knowledge-based system activities" [7, p. 173]. Managing large knowledge bases, with thousands of rules and gigabytes of facts, presents complex research problems that are at the crossroads of expert systems and databases and which come to surface nowhere more clearly than in manufacturing information systems. (5) Schema integration and transaction propagation. No existing, commercially available system supports the complete range of features needed for integrated manufacturing information systems [7]. Therefore, an interim solution is to bridge commercially available systems that support a portion of the CIM environment in such a way as to create the perception of an integrated system. Towards that end, three distinct avenues of research are being pursued: (a) schema translation, where the conceptual schema of an existing application is translated to a different data model; (b) schema integration, where a common conceptual schema is constructed from the conceptual schemas of existing applications in order to support new integrated applications; and (c) automatic data mapping and translation across applications. A related area of research stems from a fundamental requirement in engineering design data management, i.e. to provide mechanisms for organizing a design description across multiple representations and capturing the dependencies across these without imposing a priori assumptions about the kinds of supported representations [15]. The direct research issues emanating from this requirement are: (a) how to keep a design consistent when a portion of a design is changed in one representation; and (b) when to propagate changes across views. 3. SURVEY OF RESEARCH In order to evaluate how well the proposed framework can map the research threads in manufacturing information systems, we scanned recent literature and selected more than 40 articles to be mapped onto the framework. Table I categorizes the research efforts along the framework presented in the previous section. Table 2 presents an encapsulated summation of each cited work. 4. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we have presented a framework for considering research issues in manufacturing information systems. The framework is derived from the CIM Architecture proposed by the ATPC of CAM-I and addresses organizational, architectural, and infrastructural research issues. Although there are other proposed models for CIM, our survey of more than 40 research papers on manufacturing information systems and our subsequent characterization of the research threads reported in those efforts have demonstrated that the ATPC model not only serves as a conceptual guideline for developing a CIM architecture, but it can also serve as a starting point to categorize research threads in manufacturing information systems. And, even though the survey presented in this paper was not intended to be an exhaustive review of the literature, what may be generalized from it is that an over-abundance of research in manufacturing information systems has been concentrated on outfitting existing commercial database management systems for manufacturing information management. Although, this remains to be an appropriate interim goal, the long-term solution may indeed be found with research seeking a radical departure from existing commercial systems.
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Summation The authors address the complexity of the manufacturing database integration problems. They present a new modeling approach, TSER, for integrating knowledge-based systems and unifying representation of information control and communication models. This paper describes the TSER meta-database system that automates mapping between functional and structural models as well as between structural models and implementation schema. The paper describes the design and implementation of an information system for a manufacturer of optical fiber products where the data base does not address engineering design data. The paper describes the design of a database model for a telephone company to supplement the engineering drawings. It keeps track of all telephone cables, connecting conduits, etc. In this paper a conceptual frame work for flexible manufacturing in a C1M environment is proposed. The framework is illustrated with a manufacturing case and a discussion of information system in the form of expert systems. This paper presents a methodology developed for modeling and analysis of information systems and database design of production environments called M*. Two phases of M* implementation arc described. The paper proposes a set of desired characteristics for an information modeling methodology in manufacturing and compares several existing models. However, the principle orientation of the paper is towards non-design manufacturing data. The paper presents a vision of an integrated environment supporting product information throughout its life cycle. This paper examines the potential applications of object oriented concepts to engineering data management. A distributed engineering database sub-system which is integrated into the PANDA IC-CAD system is described. The paper presents a method for organizing the IC design data in a distributed system. This paper describes a software application that provides a unified view of a global database that is physically distributed among dissimilar component systems. A distributed system of cooperating and consistent knowledge-based sites is proposed that uses a semi-intelligent mechanism for better planning and scheduling. This paper presents a (generic) rule-based modeling approach to the knowledge components of a meta-database. It also provides a linkage between data representation and knowledge representation. The authors investigate the problem of automating integration procegs in hcterogenous information environments. A seamless sequence of schema translation and schema integration processes using knowledge-based system is described. This paper is concerned with global and speofic characteristics of CIM architecture. A theoretical approach for designing CIM architecture is also discussed and demonstrated. STEP (standard for the exchange of product model data) is compared to the ANSI/SPARC three-schema architecture for database management systems, emphasizing the need for the inclusion of an internal schema level in the STEP architecture. A data model is developed using the Layered Electrical Product (LEP) model of PDES. The difficulties encountered in the modeling effort leads to a proposed new model for the third level concept schema in LEP. This paper focuses on data models developed to support strategic information. The benefits of data modeling systems and the importance of data modeling are also discussed. This paper presents a case study of a sample CIM application. It discusses a mechanism to describe the distribution of various data partitions and the exchange of data modifications. A LISP-based data modeling system for integrated database design for CIM is described. The implementation addresses top-down design of information systems and bottom-up consolidation of heterogenous distributed databases. The paper describes the problem of integration of diverse communication methods used in various parts of the enterprise. Various methods for developing one basic communication schema are research. Relational model of a stand alone information resource dictionary system is described. The model is enhanced by adding another layer to allow IRDS to become self descriptive. Actual implementation of the system using ORACLE is described. This paper describes the major steps in a database design process. The development of an E-R model and its translation to a relational model is described. This paper describes the structure of a database for quality management in a manufacturing environment. This paper discusses a feature based design approach which uses the product features as the source for information retrieval and storage. The features are not only used for a CAD/CAM database, but are also used for determination of marketing information and related processing. This paper describes the design of a database for information flow in a CIM environment. It shows the results of integrating CAD/CAM with an MRP-II system. The authors describe the elements of a meta-database system for a CIM environment. This paper describes CAD-based approaches to design concurrent calculation. The proposed system uses a feature-based approach to store needed information. Using this system the designer can work with both the form features as well as the functional features. The use of an active data dictionary is suggested as a means to accomplish schema integration and mapping across heterogeneous CIM databases and/or applications. The paper describes a technique to add arbitrary integrity constraint specification and enforcement to IBM's CIM CDF product. This paper describes an integrated process engineering information architecture. It reviews the process engineering information needs and then gives a survey of existing database systems in the process engineering area. An information model for a CAM database is described. The model incorporates information from several sources such as shop orders, CAD, BOM, and process setup. This paper provides a survey of database system architectures in relation to modeling of complex engineering artifacts that involve multiple representations. This paper proposes an integrated manufacturing information system using a PROLOG-based AI approach. In this paper, different approaches to engineering databases arc compared. The various approaches are then applied to engineering data from an aircraft structural composites classification and coding schema. A clustering technique and a genetic algorithm to obtain the relevant citations from different databases in science and technology is described. This paper discusses the scope of the involvement of the industrial engineer with the development and usage of manufacturing information systems. A relational DBMS is used to maintain a finite element modeling data for composite materials. The database facilitates the export of design data to various finite element analysis programs. A new conceptual modeling approach (EDM) is proposed for modeling all design data as sets of variables and constraints across those variables. This is in marked contrast to IGES and PDES that attempt to define specialized models for a specific domain. The authors point out a mismatch between typical competencics emphasized in MIS curricula and the set of skills needed to build manufacturing information systems. The object-oriented modeling methodology for manufacturing information systems is introduced. This methodology describes manufacturing functions and data, and their relationships with a uniform representational scheme. A simplified quality inspection system is used to illustrate the application of object-oriented system development in manufacturing information systems.
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Acknowledgement--The authors wish to acknowledge the comments of an anonymous referee which helped to improve the final revision of this paper. REFERENCES 1. A. McBride and S. Brown. A multi-dimensional look at the future ofon-lin¢ technology. In Technology 2001: the Future of Computing and Communications (Edited by D. Leebaert). MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1990). 2. K. Albrecht. At America's Service. Dow Jones--Irwin, Homewood, IL (1988). 3. D. A. Marchand. Infotrends: a 1990s outlook on strategic information management. Inform. Mgmt Rev. 5(4), 23-32 (1990). 4. IBM. Communication Oriented Production Information and Control System. IBM, White Plains, NY (1973). 5. A. Scheer. Computer: a Challenge for Business Administration. Springer, Berlin, Germany (1985). 6. U. Flatau. CIM Architectural Framework. Digital Equipment Corp., Mainard, MA (1988). 7. U. Reinhold, B. O. Nnaji and A. Storr. Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Engineering. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA (1993). 8. CAM-I. 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42. C. Hsu and C. Skevington. Integration of data and knowledge in manufacturing enterprises: a conceptual framework. J. Manuf Syst. 6, 277-288 0987). 43. C. Hsu, C. Angulo, A. Perry and L. Rattner. A design method for manufacturing information management. IEEE 93-102 (1987). 44. C. Hsu, M. Bouziane, L. Rattner and L. Yee. Global information resources dictionary (GIRD): a metadatabase structure for heterogeneous, distributed environments. IEEE 492--499 (1990). 45. M. Wolfram and K. Ehrlenspiel. Design concurrent calculation in a CAD system environment. Design Manuf. 52, 63-67 (1993). 46. U. Weissflog. CIM Dictionaries: an evolutionary approach to CIM data integration. In Engineering Databases: an Enterprise Resource (Edited by Vijay Saxena). ASME, New York (1992). 47. A. Goldschmidt and G. Gangopadhyay. Adding prolog rules and OOP's inheritance to legacy databases. In Engineering Databases: an Enterprise Resource (Edited by Vijay Saxena). ASME, New York (1992). 48. R. Beck, R. Cue and V. Schricher. Engineering databases: current technology and future directions. Computer Technol. 234, 73-82 (1992). 49. P. T. Whelun. An information model for a CAM database to support flexiblemanufacture of printed circuitboards. In Engineering Databases: an Enterprise Resource (Edited by Vijay Saxena). ASME, New York (1992). 50. R. H. Katz. Toward a unified framework for version modeling in engineering databases. Computing Surv. 22, 375--408 (I~0). 51. G. Harhalakis and C. P. Lin. Integration of product and process design with manufacturing resource management. Research report, NSFD CDR 88003012. 52. R. E. Billo, R. Rucker and D. L. Shunk. Integration of group technology and coding system with an engineering database. J. Manuf Syst. 6 (1987). 53. J. Kulkarni and H. R. Parsaei. Information resource matrix for production and intelligentmanufacturing using genetic algorithm techniques. Computers ind. Engng 23, 483485 (1992). 54. D. F. Jackson and K. Okike. Relational database management systems and industrial engineering. Computers ind. Engng 23, 479-482 (1992). 55. L. K. Spainhour, W. J. Rasdorf, E. M. Patton, B. P. Burns and C. S. Collier. A computer-aided analysis system with DBMS support for fiber-reinforced thick composite materials. In Engineering Databases: on Enterprise Resource (Edited by Vijay Saxena). ASME, New York, NY (1992). 56. C. M. Eastman. The contribution of data modeling to the future development of CAD/CAM databases. In Engineering Databases: an Enterprise Resource (Edited by Vijay Saxena). ASME, New York (1992). 57. D. A. Johnson and J. E. LaBarre. Retraining management information systems for its role in computer integrated manufacturing. J. Syst. Mgmt 44(9), 18-40 (1993). 58. C. Kim, K. Kim and I. Choi. An object-oriented information modeling methodology for manufacturing information systems. Computers ind. Engng 24, 337-353 (1993). 59. M. Zhou, R. Greenwell and J. Tannock. Object-oriented methods for manufacturing information systems. Computer Integrated Manuf Syst. 7, 113-121 (1994).
Computerx ind. Engng Vo|. 28, No. 3, pp. 513-522, 1995 Copyright © 1995 Ehcvict Science Ltd 0360-8352(94)00206-1 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0360-8352/95 $9,50 + 0.00
A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK AND A SURVEY RESEARCH ISSUES IN MANUFACTURING INFORMATION SYSTEMS
OF
SAEID MOTAVALLI, ~ MOHAMMAD DADASHZADEH2t and MOHAMMAD TAGHAVI-FARD I ~Department of Industrial Engineering and 2Department of Decision Sciences, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS 67260, U.S.A. AImtrlct--We present a framework for considering research issues in manufacturing information systems. The framework is derived from the CIM Architeeture proposed by the Advanced Technical Planning Committee of Computer Aided Manufacturing-lnternational Inc., and addresses organizational, architectural, and infrastructural issues. We also survey recent literature on manufacturing information systems and characterize the works in light of the proposed framework.
1. INTRODUCTION
In Technology 2001, McBride and Brown [1] point out that in the 1990s, time is the ultimate source of competitive advantage and that the information system is the key to attaining this advantage. "Time-based competition requires on-line access to information throughout an organization, from order-entry, to purchasing, to engineering, to production, to shipping, to service," they write. "Eventually, the entire enterprise will be on-line." In At America's Service, Albrecht [2] designates a customer's contacts with a service organization as moments of truth for the quality of service received from the organization. Such moments of truth must be extended in a manufacturing concern, to include the physical activities used to transform raw materials into finished products. As pointed out by Marchand [3], this focus on the activities that affect the corresponding quality of the service and the product requires a substantially different view of organizational structures and practices. They suggest that the traditional, pyramidal organizational structure be abandoned in favor of an informationbased organizational structure which would tend to be flatter and more responsive, emphasizing horizontal, interfunctional coordination of tasks and managerial support of workers. In this context, priority is placed on information sharing among workers and functions in an on-line basis. The requirements of an on-line manufacturing organization are many. Figure l (adapted from [4-7]) depicts the necessary integration of production planning and control, computer-aided design and manufacturing, customer order servicing, quality assurance and control, purchasing and receiving and inventory management which must all be connected together with uniform data management and communication. In such an on-line organization, operational data must be delivered to workgroups and their applications, on-demand, and in the form in which it will be used. The need to transmit data rapidly to its point of use, the need to share information across applications, and the need to support non-traditional, storage intensive, data such as images, graphics, voice, and video in an information repository which must accommodate all types of data; combined with the managerial concerns for data integrity, security, availability, reliability, and effectiveness on the one hand, and planning and organizational change implementation, on the other, have made manufacturing information systems a daunting challenge and a fertile area of research. tTo w h o m correspondence should be addressed.
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The Advanced Technical Planning Committee (ATPC) of Computer Aided ManufacturingInternational Inc. (CAM-I) [8-11] has presented what can be considered a conceptual guideline for developing a Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) system. According to their proposed guideline, the functional elements for developing a CIM system consist of an organization's management structure, function/activity structure, information structure, physical structure, and computer systems structure. These functional elements are, of course, present in most manufacturing organizations. What may be absent, however, is the necessary relationships between these functional elements. Figure 2 depicts what the ATPC considers
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information systems. Specifically, we propose in Fig. 3, the mapping between the functional elements of a CIM architecture and the research threads in manufacturing information systems, and discuss these research issues in greater detail in the following subsections.
2.1. Organizational research issues What are the organizational contingencies for successful CIM implementation? Answers to this research question are being sought through case studies of both success and failure in CIM implementation, as well as by formulating hypotheses encompassing the following three organizational variables: (1) Creating organizational support. Introducing CIM in an organization is difficult, requiring the company to restructure and change many long-standing manufacturing practices and philosophies. Some companies try to introduce new technology solely by management edict. Unfortunately, without grassroots support, mandated technology may be embraced in name only. Successful technological change occurs when senior management leads the migration by establishing goals and dedicating resources, driving the process from the top down. Top management must convince middle management that the new system is essential to corporate strategy and survival. Middle management must in turn persuade supervisors and factory floor workers of the same, even to the extent of guaranteeing the retraining of those whose jobs will be changed or eliminated by CIM. (2) Planning for manufacturing information systems. Technological change must begin with the recognition that problems serious enough to warrant change do exist. However, once it is recognized that change is necessary, many managers and most technical people opt for immediate action. Although such a bias for action is laudable, the road to CIM is fraught with pitfalls and misconceptions that only thorough planning and careful formulation of organizational objectives for manufacturing information systems can help avoid. When a company introduces automation without examining the suitability of their products and manufacturing techniques for automation, or identifying the inefficiencies built into their existing systems, the desired improvements in productivity, cost, and quality will not be achieved. Similarly, when a company strictly adheres to a return on investment criterion for prioritizing projects, the necessary CIM applications targeting integration of data and communication, which do not individually produce high returns but are vital to a long-term integrated solution, may continue to be delayed for want of a long-term planning orientation. (3) Technology management. CIM requires proper technology management based on the specific needs and objectives of the organization. Without proper management, technology implementations can easily turn out to be cost ineffective at best and enslaving the organization at worst. Walford [12] proposes that the principal ongoing concern of technology-oriented coordination, planning, and decision making should be to use the proper technologies at the proper time in both the products and services produced and the tools and methodologies employed to develop those products and services. Without proper assessment of what the technology is capable of providing, how the technology may then influence changes to the organization's products or services and/or the fundamental business strategies that the company follows, and what the enterprise needs from technology, the adoption of new technologies may lead to an organization that is a slave of its technology, rather than its master [12].
2.2. Architectural research issues Today, no manufacturing company of even modest size can operate without support from information technology. But, at a time when manufacturing is increasing its dependence on information technology, technology is changing so rapidly that businesses are threatened by its pace. New developments arise before older ones can be assimilated, and systems purchased today are, at times, outdated even before they are put into use. The solution that emerged in late 1980s to deal effectively with the rapid pace of change in information technology is to build an information architecture. The manufacturing information systems architect, however, must often pay dearly for the mistakes of the past. Information systems, like buildings and streets, have had a tendency to grow haphazardly. As in a building, we do not
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like to break down an "outside wall", but, if we cannot modify the inside walls to make the architecture useful for today's context (i.e. information needs), then there is no other choice. A well-planned manufacturing information architecture should, as much as possible, obviate the need for the demolition of outside walls [13]. In Fig. ! we have depicted a model manufacturing information architecture founded on providing infrastructures for communication integration as well as data integration and emphasizing four types of application portfolios: (1) information systems applications directed at operations management; (2) information systems applications directed at engineering design and problem solving; (3) information systems applications directed at physical automation on the factory floor; and (4) information systems applications directed at linking the firm with its suppliers, customers, or other firms. It is important to note that while the model acknowledges that the application portfolios must address the entire value chain of a manufacturing concern from inbound logistics, to operations, to outbound logistics, to sales, and to service, it does not point out the nature of the required information. Similarly, although the model advocates data and communication integration, it neither assumes a particular hardware or software architectural platform, nor advocates a centralized or decentralized approach to building the architecture. Those degrees of freedom are left to the eventual architect who must fit the suggested architectural form to the specific context of the organization. Architectural research issues in manufacturing information systems therefore address these two degrees of freedom. Specifically, what is the nature of required manufacturing information and in what manner to achieve the desired level of integration. With regard to the former question researchers have addressed: (a) the overall definition of manufacturing information; (b) domainspecific manufacturing information (e.g. for electrical component products); and (c) the nature of manufacturing knowledge bases needed to complement manufacturing databases. In relation to the latter question, solutions have been proposed based on: (a) a centralized integrated database architecture; (b) a distributed integrated database architecture based on homogeneous database management systems (including client/server variations); (c) a distributed integrated database architecture based on heterogeneous database management systems; and (d) an unintegrated architecture relying on import/export interfaces.
2.3. Infrastructural research issues Integrated manufacturing databases, as viewed from a traditional, commercial database management perspective, still remain somewhat of an uncharted territory [14]. The reason is that merely gluing a database management system to a set of existing tools (such as CAD) is not a solution [15]. The major integration problem to be solved is to provide consistent transaction propagation across representations [16]. That is, when a design engineer modifies a part drawing in a CAD application, the ramifications of this update transaction on NC programs, bill of materials, process plans, inventory management, cost accounting, order processing, etc., should at least be understood and ideally be automatically propagated. The following areas of research are being investigated in order to develop the necessary tools and technical infrastructures for implementation of manufacturing information systems: (1) Data modeling. What is an appropriate conceptual data model for representing manufacturing information? Although the entity-relationship (E-R) data model [17] and its close kin, the relational data model, have proved to be successful in supporting standard business data modeling, they appear to be inadequate for modeling the levels of abstraction that is quintessential to modeling design data. A variety of extensions to existing data models as well as new data models have been proposed to support the conceptual modeling process for manufacturing information systems. (2) Feature-based access and manipulation. Regardless of the manner in which design data is stored in the database, access to, and manipulation of, design data must be feature-based. For example, even when an electrical circuit in an equipment is represented as the collection of wires, components, and the associated properties, it should be possible for a user or application to refer to that electrical circuit as a logical group and manipulate it directly. Such feature-based access
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and manipulation (or, object-orientation) capacity is being fervently pursued by both CAD and DBMS developers. (3) Specification and enforcement of integrity constraints. Integrity constraints, e.g. one specifying permissible ranges for the 3-dimensional coordinates of a point in a CAD drawing, limit the possible values in a database state. Such integrity constraints must ideally be a declarative component of design database definition and should be automatically enforced by the design database management system. Unfortunately, commercial database management systems are quite deficient in this regard even for relatively simple types of integrity constraints. Much more complex constraints such as "the circuit must behave as specified" or that "the door assembly must fit on the airplane" require revamping of our approach to specification and enforcement of integrity constraints for manufacturing information systems. (4) Integration of database and knowledge base processing. "In the factory of the future, there will be a flurry of knowledge-based system activities" [7, p. 173]. Managing large knowledge bases, with thousands of rules and gigabytes of facts, presents complex research problems that are at the crossroads of expert systems and databases and which come to surface nowhere more clearly than in manufacturing information systems. (5) Schema integration and transaction propagation. No existing, commercially available system supports the complete range of features needed for integrated manufacturing information systems [7]. Therefore, an interim solution is to bridge commercially available systems that support a portion of the CIM environment in such a way as to create the perception of an integrated system. Towards that end, three distinct avenues of research are being pursued: (a) schema translation, where the conceptual schema of an existing application is translated to a different data model; (b) schema integration, where a common conceptual schema is constructed from the conceptual schemas of existing applications in order to support new integrated applications; and (c) automatic data mapping and translation across applications. A related area of research stems from a fundamental requirement in engineering design data management, i.e. to provide mechanisms for organizing a design description across multiple representations and capturing the dependencies across these without imposing a priori assumptions about the kinds of supported representations [15]. The direct research issues emanating from this requirement are: (a) how to keep a design consistent when a portion of a design is changed in one representation; and (b) when to propagate changes across views. 3. SURVEY OF RESEARCH In order to evaluate how well the proposed framework can map the research threads in manufacturing information systems, we scanned recent literature and selected more than 40 articles to be mapped onto the framework. Table I categorizes the research efforts along the framework presented in the previous section. Table 2 presents an encapsulated summation of each cited work. 4. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we have presented a framework for considering research issues in manufacturing information systems. The framework is derived from the CIM Architecture proposed by the ATPC of CAM-I and addresses organizational, architectural, and infrastructural research issues. Although there are other proposed models for CIM, our survey of more than 40 research papers on manufacturing information systems and our subsequent characterization of the research threads reported in those efforts have demonstrated that the ATPC model not only serves as a conceptual guideline for developing a CIM architecture, but it can also serve as a starting point to categorize research threads in manufacturing information systems. And, even though the survey presented in this paper was not intended to be an exhaustive review of the literature, what may be generalized from it is that an over-abundance of research in manufacturing information systems has been concentrated on outfitting existing commercial database management systems for manufacturing information management. Although, this remains to be an appropriate interim goal, the long-term solution may indeed be found with research seeking a radical departure from existing commercial systems.
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Summation The authors address the complexity of the manufacturing database integration problems. They present a new modeling approach, TSER, for integrating knowledge-based systems and unifying representation of information control and communication models. This paper describes the TSER meta-database system that automates mapping between functional and structural models as well as between structural models and implementation schema. The paper describes the design and implementation of an information system for a manufacturer of optical fiber products where the data base does not address engineering design data. The paper describes the design of a database model for a telephone company to supplement the engineering drawings. It keeps track of all telephone cables, connecting conduits, etc. In this paper a conceptual frame work for flexible manufacturing in a C1M environment is proposed. The framework is illustrated with a manufacturing case and a discussion of information system in the form of expert systems. This paper presents a methodology developed for modeling and analysis of information systems and database design of production environments called M*. Two phases of M* implementation arc described. The paper proposes a set of desired characteristics for an information modeling methodology in manufacturing and compares several existing models. However, the principle orientation of the paper is towards non-design manufacturing data. The paper presents a vision of an integrated environment supporting product information throughout its life cycle. This paper examines the potential applications of object oriented concepts to engineering data management. A distributed engineering database sub-system which is integrated into the PANDA IC-CAD system is described. The paper presents a method for organizing the IC design data in a distributed system. This paper describes a software application that provides a unified view of a global database that is physically distributed among dissimilar component systems. A distributed system of cooperating and consistent knowledge-based sites is proposed that uses a semi-intelligent mechanism for better planning and scheduling. This paper presents a (generic) rule-based modeling approach to the knowledge components of a meta-database. It also provides a linkage between data representation and knowledge representation. The authors investigate the problem of automating integration procegs in hcterogenous information environments. A seamless sequence of schema translation and schema integration processes using knowledge-based system is described. This paper is concerned with global and speofic characteristics of CIM architecture. A theoretical approach for designing CIM architecture is also discussed and demonstrated. STEP (standard for the exchange of product model data) is compared to the ANSI/SPARC three-schema architecture for database management systems, emphasizing the need for the inclusion of an internal schema level in the STEP architecture. A data model is developed using the Layered Electrical Product (LEP) model of PDES. The difficulties encountered in the modeling effort leads to a proposed new model for the third level concept schema in LEP. This paper focuses on data models developed to support strategic information. The benefits of data modeling systems and the importance of data modeling are also discussed. This paper presents a case study of a sample CIM application. It discusses a mechanism to describe the distribution of various data partitions and the exchange of data modifications. A LISP-based data modeling system for integrated database design for CIM is described. The implementation addresses top-down design of information systems and bottom-up consolidation of heterogenous distributed databases. The paper describes the problem of integration of diverse communication methods used in various parts of the enterprise. Various methods for developing one basic communication schema are research. Relational model of a stand alone information resource dictionary system is described. The model is enhanced by adding another layer to allow IRDS to become self descriptive. Actual implementation of the system using ORACLE is described. This paper describes the major steps in a database design process. The development of an E-R model and its translation to a relational model is described. This paper describes the structure of a database for quality management in a manufacturing environment. This paper discusses a feature based design approach which uses the product features as the source for information retrieval and storage. The features are not only used for a CAD/CAM database, but are also used for determination of marketing information and related processing. This paper describes the design of a database for information flow in a CIM environment. It shows the results of integrating CAD/CAM with an MRP-II system. The authors describe the elements of a meta-database system for a CIM environment. This paper describes CAD-based approaches to design concurrent calculation. The proposed system uses a feature-based approach to store needed information. Using this system the designer can work with both the form features as well as the functional features. The use of an active data dictionary is suggested as a means to accomplish schema integration and mapping across heterogeneous CIM databases and/or applications. The paper describes a technique to add arbitrary integrity constraint specification and enforcement to IBM's CIM CDF product. This paper describes an integrated process engineering information architecture. It reviews the process engineering information needs and then gives a survey of existing database systems in the process engineering area. An information model for a CAM database is described. The model incorporates information from several sources such as shop orders, CAD, BOM, and process setup. This paper provides a survey of database system architectures in relation to modeling of complex engineering artifacts that involve multiple representations. This paper proposes an integrated manufacturing information system using a PROLOG-based AI approach. In this paper, different approaches to engineering databases arc compared. The various approaches are then applied to engineering data from an aircraft structural composites classification and coding schema. A clustering technique and a genetic algorithm to obtain the relevant citations from different databases in science and technology is described. This paper discusses the scope of the involvement of the industrial engineer with the development and usage of manufacturing information systems. A relational DBMS is used to maintain a finite element modeling data for composite materials. The database facilitates the export of design data to various finite element analysis programs. A new conceptual modeling approach (EDM) is proposed for modeling all design data as sets of variables and constraints across those variables. This is in marked contrast to IGES and PDES that attempt to define specialized models for a specific domain. The authors point out a mismatch between typical competencics emphasized in MIS curricula and the set of skills needed to build manufacturing information systems. The object-oriented modeling methodology for manufacturing information systems is introduced. This methodology describes manufacturing functions and data, and their relationships with a uniform representational scheme. A simplified quality inspection system is used to illustrate the application of object-oriented system development in manufacturing information systems.
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Acknowledgement--The authors wish to acknowledge the comments of an anonymous referee which helped to improve the final revision of this paper. REFERENCES 1. A. McBride and S. Brown. A multi-dimensional look at the future ofon-lin¢ technology. In Technology 2001: the Future of Computing and Communications (Edited by D. Leebaert). MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1990). 2. K. Albrecht. At America's Service. Dow Jones--Irwin, Homewood, IL (1988). 3. D. A. Marchand. Infotrends: a 1990s outlook on strategic information management. Inform. Mgmt Rev. 5(4), 23-32 (1990). 4. IBM. Communication Oriented Production Information and Control System. IBM, White Plains, NY (1973). 5. A. Scheer. Computer: a Challenge for Business Administration. Springer, Berlin, Germany (1985). 6. U. Flatau. CIM Architectural Framework. Digital Equipment Corp., Mainard, MA (1988). 7. U. Reinhold, B. O. Nnaji and A. Storr. Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Engineering. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA (1993). 8. CAM-I. 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