CIM has potential applications in manufacturing strategies, such as agile, lean and virtual enterprises.. It is axiomatic that computers, computer applica-tions and integrated such as en
Trang 1Guest Editorial
Next generation computer-integrated
manufacturing strategies and techniques
A GUNASEKARAN
Computer-Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) offers a
number of use ful and potential opportunities for
improving the competitiveness of manufacturing The
motivation for CIM has been based on the perceived
need for manufacturing industry to respond to changes
more rapidly than in the past CIM has potential
applications in manufacturing strategies, such as agile,
lean and virtual enterprises Hence, there is a need to
investigate the areas of further development,
applica-tions and implicaapplica-tions of CIM in the next generation of
manufacturing organizations
It is axiomatic that computers, computer
applica-tions and integrated (such as enterprise and value
chain wide) computer systems will be applied in next
generation manufacturing companies The key
pro-blem that remains to be resolved is to define where we
will apply these systems, how we will apply these systems,
how these systems will be created and how the division
of tasks between the ‘people system’ and the CIM system is
decided
The papers that appear in this special issue deal with
strategic frameworks, conceptual and analytical models,
and case studies focusing on new architectures, changes
in the organization, technology and people required
for the design and implementation of CIM in order to
enable companies to compete on flex ibility and
responsiveness The contributed papers deal with, but
are not limited to, the following
· Strategic and organizational adaptation of
Com-puter-Integrated Manufacturing Systems (CIMS)
for 21st century manufacturing competitiveness
· Design methodologies for CIM systems including
architectures and evaluation of adaptability for
lean and agile manufacturing, and value chain integration
· CIM in a physically distributed manufacturing environment
· Enterprise integration and environmental issues
as the main objectives in the design and imple-mentation of CIMS
· Rapid prototyping, virtual design, virtual
manu-facturing and virtual enterprise and CIM
· Operations Control (productivity, quality,
flexi-bility, cost and dependability) in the future CIMS
· CIM in Small and Medium Enterprises.
· Human factors and CIM.
An overview of the articles that appear in this special issue is presented below
The paper, ‘Computerization strategy for Small Manufacturing Enterprises in Hong Kong, by Chung and Chik, presents the results of an empirical study of computerization in Small Manufacturing Enterprises ( SMEs) in Hong Kong This study uses a survey as a research instrument to collect data concerning the organizational and technical system design issues of computerization in Hong Kong SMEs The strategic components, including manufacturing initiatives, man-agerial concerns, technological investment and organi-zational change management, are identified and evaluated Based on the results of this study, a computerization framework is developed for SMEs to gain competitive advantage
Sivakumar in his paper, ‘Multiobjective dynamic scheduling discrete event simulation’ , develops a discrete event simulation based ‘online near-real-time’ dynamic multi-objective scheduling system to achieve Pareto optimal solutions in a complex manufacturing environment The approach includes the use of a linear optimization algorithm with multiple objectives and auto simulation model generation Manufacturing is
International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
ISSN 0951-192X print/ ISSN 1362-3052 onlineÓ 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http:/ / www.tandf.co.uk/ journals
Author: A Gunasekaran, Department of Management, University of
Massachu-setts, North Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300, USA.
e-mail: agunasekaran@umassd.edu
Trang 2one of the most complex elements of the supply chain
and he focuses on manufacturing to demonstrate the
capability that may be extended in future to the entire
supply chain The author has implemented the system
at a semiconductor back-end site to test the solutions
The impact of the system includes the achievement of
world-class cycle time, improved machine utilization,
reduction in the time that planners and manufacturing
personnel spend on scheduling, and more predictable
and highly repeatable manufacturing performance In
addition, it enables managers and senior planners to
carry out ‘what if’ analysis to plan for the future
Because of the exigencies imposed by the market,
production management must take into account and
optimize the exchange of data with the environment of
the firm (clients, providers and partners) Information
technologies such as the Internet can provide SMEs
with appropriate solutions Caillaud and Passe mard in
their paper, ‘CIM and virtual enterprises: a case study in
a SME’ , propose a methodology to analyse and design
an extended production management system Their
agriculture cooperative case study illustrates the
defini-tion of a soludefini-tion dedicated to the needs of reactivity in
synergy with its partners’ network
CIM requires cross-functional cooperation, and the
involvement of employees in product and process
development A successful CIM initiative in SMEs must
have top management involvement and commitment
and a CIM compatible organizational infrastructure,
which includes the requisite skills, appropriate training
and education, and adequate incentives and rewards
Top management must commit the resources necessary
to acquire the required technology and bring about any
necessary changes in the organizational infrastructure
Top management must likewise be willing to accept the
long-term consequences of their decisions SMEs play
an increasingly important role in the competitiveness of
many industries in the areas of product and process
innovation, flexibility, and in the development of
innovative management methods, organizational
con-ventions, and human resource practices One of the
ways that SMEs can achieve a competitive advantage in
manufacturing is through the implementation of CIM
To promote a better understanding of organizational
issues pertaining to the implementation of CIM in
SMEs, a framework is proposed by Marri, Gunasekaran,
McGaughey and Grieve in their paper, ‘Implications of
organization and human behaviour on the
implemen-tation of CIM in SMEs: an empirical analysis’ , for use in
examining and explaining the organizational
ramifica-tions of CIM A literature review and an empirical study
provide the foundation for the proposed framework
With the rapid development of transportation and
Internet technology, more and more businesses are
being organized as manufacturing networks of different units Some of these units are wholly owned by the Core Company, while others are outsourced to se rvice providers The formation of a virtual enterprise is becoming a growing trend as companies concentrate upon lean manufacturing, core competence and economic benefit Studies indicate that the administra-tion and management of these networks, which involve
a number of partner companies with dissimilar business natures and which are mostly geographically dispersed,
is an important issue to be addressed Owing to the diverse interests, competence and business culture of individual partner companies, the selection of manu-facturing partners would be an essential success factor
In addition, the capability of the information flow infrastructure is another consideration since it affects the performance of the virtual network Lau and Wong
in their paper, ‘Partner selection and information infrastructure of a virtual enterprise network’, attempt
to address both of these issues with the objective of showing how small companies can make use of the emerging technology A case example is presented to illustrate the manufacture of electronic pagers via the virtual enterprise network
Cutting pieces of given shapes and sizes from an object of larger dimensions with minimal material loss is
a practical problem whose optimal or suboptimal solutions have great economical value in many applica-tions The solutions of this problem often require automated tools, which may not be achievable for SMEs Ahonen, Alvarenga and Provedel in their paper,
‘A client-broker-server architecture of a virtual enter-prise for cutting stock applications’ , propose an approach based on the concept of virtual enterprise using a client-broker-server architecture as an imple-mentation model
Implementation of Statistical Process Control (SPC) in an automated environment requires a number of issues to be addressed Changes in sample data distribution and statistical properties, such as independence, will affect the use and interpretation
of SPC procedures; changed monitoring and adjust-ment techniques will influence the subsequent deci-sion making; at the same time, automation could facilitate implementation of SPC with other control techniques, In the paper, ‘SPC in an automated manufacturing environment’ , Cai, Xie and Goh discuss the potential of combining SPC with engineer-ing process control methods Comparative analysis between traditional SPC methods and SPC combined with feedback control is presented Actual and simulated data are used to illustrate the procedure, which, because of its self-tuning ability, could greatly reduce syste m re-adjustment, while most of the
Trang 3advantages of traditional SPC are simultaneously
preserved
SMEs have gained competitive advantage by using
Just-In-Time (JIT) , Total Quality Management (TQM) ,
and Information Technology (IT) Cellular
Manufactur-ing (CM) has received less attention from SMEs The
paper, ‘Experience of a Small to Medium Size
Enter-prise in the design and implementation manufacturing
cells’, by Gunasekaran, McNeil, McGaughey and Ajasa
reports the findings of a case study on the application of
Group Technology (GT) in an SME A framework for
the design and implementation of Cellular
Manufactur-ing Systems (CMSs) is proposed The framework is
examined and explained in the context of the case
study The first part of this paper examines the nature of
CM as well as its strategic value to manufacturing firms
The second part focuses on the design and
implementa-tion of CMSs Finally, a case study conducted at a small
company in England is use d to demonstrate the
application of the framework
Efficient management of product information is
critical to the enhancement of corporate
competitive-ness Kim, Kang, Lee and Yoo in their paper, ‘A
distributed, open, intelligent product data management
system’, explain the design and development of a
distributed, open, and intelligent product data
manage-ment system First, the authors summarize the
require-ments for Product Data Management (PDM) systems
and explain them using a design scenario Since
product data are often managed in distributed
comput-ing environments, Common Object Request Broker
Architecture (CORBA) is employed to ensure the
interoperability among distributed objects Standard
formats of data and knowledge, such as the Standard
for Exchange of Product model data ( STEP) and
Kn owle dge Que r y an d Man ip u lation Lan gu age
(KQML), are used to achieve openness Then, they
developed a workflow management system that
pro-vides an integrated management of task processes and
information flows While designing the system, the main
emphasis is given to dynamic process adaptation, which
is much demanded by product development processes Use of intelligent agents is proposed to achieve the adaptation at run time A method of agent cooperation and communication is described The agents are also use d to implement content se arch for enhanced product data services
To date, many general procedural models to formulate the design process and to assess the quality
of design have been described by industrialists and researchers Despite similarities, all suggested meth-odologies contain various types of information that provide few possibilities for practitioners to consider users’ reaction towards product attributes In practice and in a majority of cases, designers and manufacturers deploy huge investments in research and development and in product designs that still have to be used with a complexity of preferences by customers The model presented by Mosuavi, Adl, Rakowski, Gunasekaran and Mirnezami in their paper, ‘Customer Optimization Route and Evaluation (CORE) for product design’, addresses the need for interactions between design and market needs A method to translate customers’ qualitative requirements into design attributes is intro-duced in CORE The customer’s satisfaction level for each product attribute is then evaluated, offering guidelines to designers for improvement in product design
Acknowledgments
The Guest Editor of this Special Issue has been overwhelmed by the response to the call for papers for
‘ Next generation computer-integrated manufacturing strategies and techniques’ Each paper was reviewed by
at least two referees The Guest Editor gratefully acknowledges the assistan ce provided by the Editors
of the International Journal of Computer-Integrated
Manu-facturing (Professors Dave Williams and Steve Newman)
and more than 20 anonymous referees who reviewed manuscripts for this Special Issue