Economic view of CIM system architecture

The synergistic advantage of systems integration for Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) has been a powerful thrust behind the productivity advancement in recent decades. However, the dependency among components, the intangible benefits and complexity of the system have been a barrier for system developers and the business community. This paper reports a systematic approach to assess economic merits of the CIM system. It projects CIM system designs on a multiple layer architecture with consideration of project life cycle. It introduces a modelling formalism to present a structured view of the economic aspect of the CIM system. The multiple criteria's aspect of CIM justification was treated with the AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) method. The complexity of various cost factors is reduced through application of the ABC (Activity Based Costing) method. The benefits of low level activities, both tangible and intangible, are then hierarchically aggregated into higher level system objectives. It also provides the necessary linkages between the economic and other views. A simple example was used to illustrate the approach.