CIM Handbook: The Opportunities for Rationalisation Opened Up by the Acquisition and Integration of Computer Automation aims to help everyone responsible for structuring computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) concepts and for procuring and selecting CIM components, to find the solutions which meet their requirements in an optimal way, as well as having scope for future development. The significance of the most important individual CIM packages, their function, the increase in efficiency to be obtained by their implementation and the prerequisites for their integration in a total CIM concept will all be clearly set out in this book. The book begins with a discussion of CIM and the increasing competition faced by companies in both domestic and international markets. This is followed by separate chapters on the most important CIM packages; the basic prerequisites of CIM, namely local networks and databases; the implementation of CIM projects; and CIM concepts for the middle-order companies. The final chapter describes the successful implementation of an automated assembly provisioning system in the car industry.
