| Manufacturing firms in the United States are facing world class competition from around the globe, competition that is so great, it's threatening the very survival of many industries. Computer integrated manufacturing is seen as the last chance for American businesses to increase productivity, quality and competitiveness.;Virtually all research efforts directed toward implementation of CIM have been conducted by and for Fortune 500 companies. While small businesses have the same need to improve productivity, quality and competitiveness, they are unable to avail themselves of the expensive, complex and untested technologies fielded by the Fortune 500 companies or being developed in federal laboratories.;Therefore a need exists for a methodology to deliver the increased productivity, quality and competitiveness that is required for the very survival of many of these small manufacturing firms.;This research has put forth a methodology that uses existing off-the-shelf, state-of-the art technology wherever possible. This methodology has been successfully applied to the Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) in the Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Packaging Engineering (CIMPE) Laboratory at the University of Missouri-Rolla. The CIMPE was selected as a demonstration platform because it's complexity matches that of a large percentage of small manufacturing firms in the United States. |
