Production planning and control within a CIM environment: some current developments and requirements for the future

Abstract. This paper considers the integration problems associated with incorporating production planning and control (PP&C) systems within CIM; these problems are typically not differentiated from functionally related problems, and have in the past received relatively little attention. The on-going emergence of a number of standards relevant to manufacturing software systems provides an opportunity to assess the current situation with regard to proprietary PP&C systems and to suggest ways forward towards ‘seamless’ integration of PP&C within the CIM environment. The problems arising from conventional integration approaches are briefly described, and the concept of a simplifying ‘integration platform’ is introduced; the three-schema information architecture is presented as part of this ‘integration simplification’ approach. Current and developing PP&C systems are assessed against a number of information system integration criteria, and the results of a small survey of proprietary packages are presented. The paper concludes that information must be regarded as an enterprise-wide asset, rather than belonging to individual software applications, and that the adoption of relevant standards will enable seamless integration within a three-schema architecture. An increasing number of proprietary packages are adopting standards and methodologies which ease the integration problem significantly.