Michael T. Hillery
Department of Manufacturing and Operations Engineering, University of Limerick Limerick IRELAND
C. Sheahan
SPS Hi-Life Tools, Shannon Industrial Estate
Co. Clare, IRELAND
Abstrakt
The Company manufactures high precision tooling for the screw fastener industry. The product mix includes wire drawing dies, thread rolling dies, cold head forming punches and associated tooling. Their customers are mainly in the aerospace and automotive manufacturing industries.
The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a CIM System for this manufacturing environment.
The entire development cycle is evaluated and the key design decision making process is reviewed. The system implementation is examined with special emphasis on the task of: (i) acquiring a knowledge of the organisation (ii) accessing the manufacturing experience within work-force and (iii) effectively structuring this into a Computer Integrated Manufacturing System.
The short and long term problems/benefits of the project are presented and conclusions drawn from the experience of implementing this complex system.