An open architecture for CIM

CIM encompasses a suite of tools that are used within the manufacturing industries to solve such business problems, as reduce time to market, achieve total quality, reduce costs, increase product reliability and organization flexibility. The author gives practical objectives for the CIM architecture in the discrete manufacturing industry and recommends the use of consultancy tools to assess the business/manufacturing needs. These objectives are: to protect the enterprise investments, to use distributed computing and databases where appropriate, to achieve leadership availability and reliability of IT/IS operations, to implement EDI as infrastructure for JIT, to implement concurrent engineering, to capitalize on data as a Company asset and to incorporate emerging technologies into the existing environment