Improving manufacturing management
The results of the REAL-I-CIM project, funded within the EU's research programme in the field of Information Technologies (ESPRIT) are now available. The objective of this project was to develop a low-cost CIM system which could be used for the short-term planning and control of manufacturing processes. The project has produced a REAL-I-CIM toolbox for advanced management of the shop floor of industrial SMEs, which is easy to integrate with the existing systems in companies. This toolbox allows the construction of flexible manufacturing management solutions and includes modules for production scheduling and control, as well as quality and maintenance management. Other features of the toolbox include modules for monitoring and control purposes, which perform real time control between scheduled and actual shop floor data, data logging, as well as data analysis and interpretation. Associated with the software tools, a set of methodologies and consulting services for the implementation of such systems is available.