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MARCH 2019 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 37 COMPUTER INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING production planning and control area mostly runs on large clients or servers, although the software itself is more frequently supplied by several software houses and not by the com- puter vendor. As in the common business administrative area, the software packages, which are in- tegrated within themselves, have a modular structure and their single components can also be bought and applied. Therefore, a company rarely purchases and installs all modules of such a package. This results in functional over- laps and data redundancy. One example of this would be material requirements, and planning and purchasing systems. The third group on the inner ring includes the automation of manufacturing installa- tions. Examples include robots, numeri- cally controlled machines, flexible manu- facturing systems, and computer-aided measuring and testing methods. This area is characterized by the extreme heterogeneity of the systems involved, the diversity of which being much more pronounced than in the pre- viously mentioned groups of functions. These seven CIM strategies are shown in Figure 2, and Figure 3 shows the CIM hierarchy. The Hub These statements have shown that there are serious impediments to integration within these groups of applications. Few suppliers cover all three sectors. Therefore, suppliers have done little to nothing about interfaces, not to mention the integration of various groups of applications. Information and communica- tion management, represented by the hub of the wheel which links everything, is intended to serve as the information management and communication control function between the single areas. It oper- ates on a common, integrated da- tabase. Key Challenges There are three major challenges to developing a smooth-operating computer-integrated manufactur- ing system: 1. Integration of Components From Different Suppliers Problems may arise when dif- ferent machines, such as comput- er numerically controlled (CNC) conveyors, and robots use differ- ent communication protocols. In the case of automated guided ve- Figure 2: The seven CIM strategy categories. Figure 3: The CIM hierarchy of activities.