Appropriate communications [CIM strategy]

To protect future investment in manufacturing technologies industry needs to utilise much of the equipment it already has, thereby achieving cost effective modernisation, while planning long term integration. Integration of both automated manufacturing systems and, most important, the integration of business functions such as marketing, distribution, finance, human resource and design. These functions all require access to the same information, in order to support a smooth flow of data and materials from design through assembly to the customer. With computer integrated manufacturing, or as the author would prefer to call it, computer integrated business, the benefits of each technology grow exponentially