CIMIDES - A COMPUTER INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING INFORMATION AND DATA EXCHANGE SYSTEM

The effective introduction of the computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) concept requires a co-ordinated effort to use and control the knowledge, information, data and material within an organization. This article describes a framework of an intelligent computer integrated manufacturing information and data exchange system, CIMIDES together with some of the research case studies undertaken jointly with industry. CIMIDES controls the flow of information and coordinates the activities of ten interrelated mini expert systems (MES) together with their data processing elements using the artificial intelligence, AI and blackboard paradigm. This paradigm is applicable to many complex tasks where several bodies of expertise must interact in harmony to resolve a complex problem of greater magnitude than any one of these MESs can effectively handle. The MESs communicate through a shared global database called the blackboard, rather than by communicating directly with one another. Using such methodology, the decisions, inferences and requirements are globally broadcast so that each affected MES can simultaneously realize the impacts and issues of an intended plan of actions by another. CIMIDES schedules and prioritizes the contributions of each MES to the overall manufacturing problem by placing them on a queue of importance.