Toolbox of integrated planning tools - a case study

In the frame of the ESPRIT project CIM-PLATO a toolbox of planning tools for CIM applications has been developed. The planning tasks addressed by the various tools span a wide range of CIM activities for the design, planning and installation of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) and Flexible Assembly Systems (FAS) in a CIM environment. By selecting individual tools, a customized toolbox can be configured for a specific CIM problem. The tools in such a toolbox can be integrated via an Information Management System. In the development of the tools and the Information System existing and forthcoming standards have been taken into account: STEP [2], the standard for exchange of product model data, EXPRESS [1], the specification language used in STEP, and OSF/MOTIF [3] for the design of the user interfaces. Apart from the development of the individual tools an important goal of the project is to define a framework for an open toolbox concept in which new tools can be easily integrated. This paper presents O->M, one of the application specific toolboxes implemented by the CIM-PLATO consortium. O->M addresses the main planning activities for product configuration and manufacturing of a computer system selected from the Bull catalogue. It consists of five tools from the CIM-PLATO toolbox and an Information System. O->M demonstrates the adaptability of the tools involved to specific applications; their integratability, which is achieved by the use of the common Information System based on standards for data exchange; and the flexibility of the CIM-PLATO toolbox approach which yields flexible solutions with different levels of automation.