This book presents a wide-ranging view of the benefits available through the intelligent use of manufacturing information systems. Readers benefit from the authors' collective experience in bringing new information technologies into manufacturing companies. Using examples of actual IT implementations, they provide a comprehensive picture of how to cut costs and add valuable new capabilities to IT projects. The book takes a comprehensive look at five major areas where IT systems can play a pivotal role in improving any company's manufacturing processes. Going beyond theory, the authors show readers how they can ensure that their IT investments bring a real payback to their companies.

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.

This book describes a vision of manufacturing in the twenty-first century that maximizes efficiencies and improvements by exploiting the full power of information and provides a research agenda for information technology and manufacturing that is necessary for success in achieving such a vision. Research on information technology to support product and process design, shop-floor operations, and flexible manufacturing is described. Roles for virtual manufacturing and the information infrastructure are also addressed. A final chapter is devoted to nontechnical research issues.

Software has become a decisive cost and time factor in regard to developing and establishing manufacturing systems and setting them into operation. In addition, software determines the availability, reliability as well as functionality of manufacturing units. Software Engineering for Manufacturing Systems considers the methods and procedures required to deal with problems in the software engineering of control technology for manufacturing systems. Significantly, the following topics are addressed: * definitions and requirements of software for control technology * system design, describing forms of control software * CASE tools for the generation of a code * configuration, adaption of standard software variants, and re-usability of software * and man-machine interface. It contains the selected proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering and Case Tools for Control Technology of Manufacturing Systems, sponsored by the IFIP and held in Germany, in March 1996.

This second edition of the classic textbook has been written to provide a completely up-to-date text for students of mechanical, industrial, manufacturing and production engineering, and is an indispensable reference for professional industrial engineers and managers. In his outstanding book, Professor Katsundo Hitomi integrates three key themes into the text: * manufacturing technology * production management * industrial economics Manufacturing technology is concerned with the flow of materials from the acquisition of raw materials, through conversion in the workshop to the shipping of finished goods to the customer. Production management deals with the flow of information, by which the flow of materials is managed efficiently, through planning and control techniques. Industrial economics focuses on the flow of production costs, aiming to minimise these to facilitate competitive pricing. Professor Hitomi argues that the fundamental purpose of manufacturing is to create tangible goods, and it has a tradition dating back to the prehistoric toolmakers. The fundamental importance of manufacturing is that it facilitates basic existence, it creates wealth, and it contributes to human happiness - manufacturing matters. Nowadays we regard manufacturing as operating in these other contexts, beyond the technological. It is in this unique synthesis that Professor Hitomi's study constitutes a new discipline: manufacturing systems engineering - a system that will promote manufacturing excellence. Key Features: * The classic textbook in manufacturing engineering * Fully revised edition providing a modern introduction to manufacturing technology, production managment and industrial economics * Includes review questions and problems for the student reader

BASYS conferences were initially organized to promote the development of balanced automation systems. The first BASYS conference was successfully launched in Victoria, Brazil, in 1995. BASYS'06 is the 7th edition in this series. This book comprises three invited keynote papers and forty-nine regular papers accepted for presentation at the conference. All together, these papers will make significant contributions to the literature of Intelligent Technology for Balanced Manufacturing Systems.

A technological book is written and published for one of two reasons: it either renders some other book in the same field obsolete or breaks new ground in the sense that a gap is filled. The present book aims to do the latter. On my return from industry to an academic career, I started writing this book because I had seen that a gap existed. Although a great deal of information appeared in the published literature about various technical aspects of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), surprisingly little had been written about the systems con text within which the sophisticated hardware and software of AMT are utilized to increase efficiency. Therefore, I have attempted in this book to show how structured approaches in the design and evaluation of modern manufacturing plant may be adopted, with the objective of improving the performance of the factory as a whole. I hope this book will be a contribution to the newly recognized, multidisciplinary engineering function known as manufacturing sys tems engineering. The text has been designed specifically to demonstrate the systems aspects of modern manufacturing operations, including: systems con cepts of manufacturing operation; manufacturing systems modelling and evalua tion; and the structured design of manufacturing systems~ One of the major difficulties associated with writing a text of this nature stems from the diversity of the topics involved. I have attempted to solve this problem by adopting an overall framework into which the relevant topics are fitted.