A Knowledge-based Prototype of a Factory Level CIM Systems.

There is a critical need for establishing CIM at the factory level, to complement the research done in manufacturing integration, which has concentrated so far on flexible manufacturing cells, robotics and other fabrication and material handling devices. This paper identifies the application modules that clearly lend themselves to an integrated information flow in a controlled manner: Computer aided design and computer aided process planning constitute the product and process design centers of the proposed system respectively. Manufacturing resource planning undertakes the management of production plans to satisfy the market demand. The functional design of the system was derived from expertise in manufacturing management. The modeling and analysis are formalized with the use of generalized Petri-Nets. The implementation strategy recognizes the existence of application tools whose characteristics must be retained and subjected to synergism. Hence, a prolog-based database interoperability language enabled us to construct the knowledge- base that controls the system. Extensions of this work include the incorporation of a shop floor control module, to interface with the factory level