MR-IE: an enterprise integration reference model for CIMS implementation

It has been well recognised that implementing a CIM system can provide great benefit for an enterprise to improve production efficiency, flexibility and product quality. It can also help reducing production cost, lead-time, inventory, and the time-to-market. However, despite the great advances of information technologies and automation technologies in recent years, the implementation of a CIM system remains a fairly hard task. The major reason for the difficulty in implementing a CIM system is due to the high complexity of many business aspects in a manufacturing enterprise. How to model the enterprise business so that the real-world business can be properly "mapped" into the computer-processing world becomes the key issue for a successful CIM implementation. In this paper, a new reference model, named MR-IE, for modelling the total business of a manufacturing enterprise to facilitate the implementation of a CIM system is proposed. In this reference model, not only the static constitutional structures but also the various dynamic behaviours of a manufacturing enterprise business are modelled.