Business experience with computer integrated manufacturing. A survey of current strategy and practice

The paper describes the results of a recent field study of CIM adoption strategies in US manufacturing firms. The purpose of the study was to identify the extent to which CIM technologies are in use in US firms, the impact of a facility´s process characteristics on the CIM development process, and the adoption policy being followed implicitly or explicitly. The survey focused on the following aspects:(a) manufacturing process characteristics, (b) the CIM development process, (c) the CIM architecture, and (d) perceived value and benefits. Our results indicate that CIM implementations follow a definite temporal pattern with respect to the adoption of certain information technologies. In addition, the initiative for CIM programs is usually generated from the bottom-up. This gradual bottom-up approach appears to restrain, rather than enable, plant-wide integration for critical business processes such as order fulfilment or product development. While most CIM users find that their CIM projects successfully meet their initial operational goals, the technology seems to be poorly integrated still. More crucially, it appears that CIM is not being adopted as a strategic information system for competitive missions