The Configurable Database: The Key to Standardisation, Flexibility and Integration in Production Engineering

Summary

Production control has been computerised, more or less, for many years. More recently, computerisation and automation have been taking place concurrently in the design office and on the shop floor. Process planning, and production engineering generally, has remained a largely manual bottleneck between design and production, despite the central nature of its role in the life cycle of a manufactured part. The computerisation of process planning should reflect this central nature by ensuring that company standards, either of equipment or of methods, are controlled by a central database management system. Within this control there must be the possibility of flexibility, to take account of special cases, of evolution of the standards without calling in expensive computer specialists, and of interfacing successfully with existing systems.

A product which meets these stringent requirements is described, and suggestions are made on ways in which it will provide a smooth development path towards CIM.