Automatic factories

Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) systems include product design, actual manufacturing of the product, shipping, and even customer product support. The drive toward CIM has three key technical thrusts: flexible automation, information integration, and online optimization. How these three thrusts relate to a manufacturing facility's generic activities is detailed. The authors define manufacturing control as the actuation of a manufacturing plant to make products, using the present and past observed state of the manufacturing plant, and demand from the market. Three basic types of algorithms that are used to control factories are described. These are dispatching algorithms, scheduling algorithms, and re-order point algorithms. Manufacturing computer-control architectures and research issues are addressed.>