Modem manufacturing systems involve many processes and operations that can be monitored and controlled at several levels of intelligence. At the highest level there is a computer that supervises the various manufacturing functions, whereas at the lowest level there are stand alone computer controlled systems of manufacturing processes and robotic cells. Until recenty computer-aided manufacturing systems constituted isolated "islands" of automation, each oriented to a particular application, but present day systems offer integrated approaches to manufacturing and enterprise operations. These modem systems, known as computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) systems, can easily meet the current performance and manufacturing competitiveness requirements under strong environmental changes. CIM systems are much of a challenge, and imply a systemic approach to the design and operation of a manufacturing enterprise. Actualy, a CIM system must take into account in a unified way the following three views : the user view, the technology view, and the enterprise view. This means that CIM includes both the engineering and enterprise planning and control activities, as well as the information flow activities across all the stages of the system.

On the verge of the global information society, enterprises are competing for markets that are becoming global and driven by customer demand, and where growing specialisation is pushing them to focus on core competencies and look for partnerships to provide products and services. Simultaneously the public demands environmentally sustainable industries and urges manufacturers to mind the whole life span of their products and production resources. Information infrastructure systems are anticipated to offer services enabling and catalyzing the strategies of manufacturing companies responding to these challenges: they support the formation of extended enterprises, the mastering of full product and process life cycles, and the digitalization of the development process. Information infrastructure systems would accommodate access to and transformation of information as required by the various authorized stakeholders involved in the life phases of products or production resources. Services should be available to select and present all relevant information for situations involving any kind of players, during any life phase of a product or artifact, at any moment and at any place.

This thesis reports on an innovative production-scheduling model for virtual computer-integrated manufacturing (VCIM) systems. It also describes a robust genetic algorithm for production scheduling in VCIM systems. The model, which is the most comprehensive of its kind to date, is not only capable of supporting collaborative shipment scheduling and handling multiple product orders simultaneously, but also helps cope with multiple objective functions under uncertainties. In turn, the genetic algorithm, characterised by an innovative algorithm structure, chromosome encoding, crossover and mutation, is capable of searching for optimal/suboptimal solutions to the complex optimisation problem in the VCIM production- scheduling model described. Lastly, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified in a comprehensive case study.

Enterprise operation efficiency is seriously constrained by the inability to provide the right information, in the right place, at the right time. In spite of significant advances in technology it is still difficult to access information used or produced by different applications due to the hardware and software incompatibilities of manufacturing and information processing equipment. But it is this information and operational knowledge which makes up most of the business value of the enterprise and which enables it to compete in the marketplace. Therefore, sufficient and timely information access is a prerequisite for its efficient use in the operation of enterprises. It is the aim of the ESPRIT project AMICE to make this knowledge base available enterprise-wide. During several ESPRIT contracts the project has developed and validated CIMOSA: Open System Architecture for CIM. The CIMOSA concepts provide operation structuring based on cooperating processes. Enterprise operations are represented in terms of functionality and dynamic behaviour (control flow). Information needed and produced, as well as resources and organisational aspects relevant in the course of the operation are modelled in the process model. However, the different aspects may be viewed separately for additional structuring and detailing during the enterprise engineering process.

Intended for revision and homework, the double-page spreads in this book on GCSE DT resistant materials contain multiple choice questions, quiz-style exercises, and GCSE-style questions. Marks are recorded on each page to give students an indication of their progress.