Beyond CIM - what?

From an Illinois-based machine-tool company., you can learn one direction in which metal-products manufacturing is headed. Not only does the company adopt the most advanced technologies, but it's also reshaping itself internally to make best use of theme

If predictions by George Hess and other visionaries at Ingersoll Milling Machine Co (IMM) are correct, by the year 2000 their company will be drastically different from what it is today. The traditional hierarchy of authority will have flattened out. Managers and technical people will be grouped according to knowledge domains, and will form swat teams to build, expand, and maintain knowledge bases. In addition, everyone in IMM's business enterprise including top executives, suppliers, and customers-will be linked together on a global communications network.

Hess made these forecasts in a talk given during the Autofact 88 technical conference, held recently in Chicago. One of our country's leading experts on computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM), he's vice-president of systems and planning at the Rockford, IL machine tool company.

Calling his talk "Beyond CIM-A computer-optimized manufacturing system," Hess sees the 1990s as a decade of optimization in design and use of advanced manufacturing technologies. "We saw the 1970s as the decade of automation, " he says, whereas the 1980s focused on integration. Our optimized system will be a next-generation business information system, one that lies beyond CIM as we know it today.

This is our company's vision for the future, a world of expert systems, feature-based solid modeling, and automatic NC-program generation. Our world also will include full electronic integration of the entire manufacturing enterprise, with inter-organizational, electronic exchange of technical as well as business data. "

To optimize implementation and use of these technologies, the company will change in form and functionality, Hess believes. More rapid than growth, and more radical than evolution, these changes constitute a metamorphosis.

"Traditional boundaries of authority and function will crumble as the new natural order emerges," he says. "We can't yet envision this order, but we do know it will be quite different from today's. We're not afraid of change, nor do we resist it.

Builds custom machines

Founded in 1887, IMM is a subsidiary of Ingersoll International inc, a privately owned holding company. Other subsidiaries are Ingersoll Cutting Tool Co in the US, along with Ingersoll Machinen und Werkzeuge, Bohle, Waldrich-Siegen, and Waldrich-Coburg in West Germany. Ingersoll International employs some 4500 people, and ships products valued at $400 million a year.

Occupying 959,000 sq ft of floor space in its Rockford facilities, IMM builds a variety of custom machine tools and systems. These include portal and single-housing milling machines, transfer lines, FMS, composite tape layup machines, and special machines for applications such as turning graphite and scalping copper and aluminum.

The company began its involvement in electronically aided manufacturing in 1957, when two NC drills were installed. During the early 1960s, IMM emplaced an automatic guided vehicle system (AGVS) and an automated storage/retrieval system (AS/RS). The company applied its first NC machining center and CAD system in 1975.

"By then, we recognized that for automation to be successful, the employee users, not systems implementers, would have to decide what was to be automated," Hess relates. "Our employees jumped at the chance; everyone wanted his or her function automated.

"Our systems engineers and programmers responded, building separate computer application systemsislands of information-for almost every operating department. Each system had its own standalone data files. This activity began in accounting, then expanded into CAD and NC programming. Later the billsof-material function was included.

"The results were good, in that operating departments performed more effectively than before," he continues. "We had reached a new plateau of operation, running automated but uncoordinated departments at full speed. The problem was that by 1980, we found ourselves with over 1300 different application programs and systems, operating from 225 different sets of computer master files.

"There were many bridge programs that transferred data from one file to another. We used bridges in an attempt to improve file integrity and thus the usefulness of reports that came from them. At the same time, though, we realized we could not continue down that road."

Unified data

Beginning in early 1980, and for about a year and a half, IMM reprogrammed all existing computer systems, and developed a completely integrated, corporate computer system with shareable databases. The bills-of-material function was made the heart of the new system, because in a manufacturing company, BOM drives the whole business.

Largely as a result of these efforts, IMM was awarded the 1982 Lead Award. This prestigious award for CIM activities is given annually by the Computer and Automated Systems Association (CASA) of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), Dearborn, MI.

During the early 80s, the company also expanded its CAD system, obtaining workstations and software from Cadam Inc, Burbank, CA. IMM now has 170 graphics workstations, and passes CAD geometric files along for NC programming, job routing, and quality assurance. In 1982, the company began installing a DNC network, which is still being enlarged and enhanced.

That same year brought initiation of a $20-million, five-machine, flexible machining system (FMS) to replace a machine shop (see box). The company also added a computeraided nesting system to their NC thermal cutting operation.

Integrated with bills-of-material, job routing, and master scheduling, this computer system receives geometric part shapes from the CAD database. Nesting software then automatically arranges these shapes into a nest pattern that's most efficient for the plate size and shape. The program is then transmitted over the DNC network to a thermal cutting machine.

As a result of applying this technology, IMM has reduced part turnaround time from ten days to three, increased cutter throughput by 125 plates a year, and trimmed labor costs/part by 90 percent.

To improve efficiency of its jobrouting operations, IMM installed a computer-aided process planning (CAPP) system. This has slashed routing labor costs in half. Dramatic savings in labor costs have also been realized for bills-of-material, purchasing, NC part programming, and quality control.

"Although our CIM system covers a wide variety of functions, people engaged in those functions find the system easy to use," Hess comments. "At every step of design and implementation, we've encouraged participation by the employee users. We'll continue to do so as we design our computer-optimized system for the 1990s. "

Next generation

Initially, IMM's optimized system will be built on expert and expertlike computer systems, featurebased solid modeling, automatic NC-program generation, and more extensive networking. The company's internal, local-area network will include more people and functions than it does today, and will be expanded into a global, wide-area network embracing many customers and suppliers.

"We're now developing the next generation of subsystems that will make up an optimized system, " says Hess. "Some of these will simply give a performance boost to our current systems. Other subsystems, though, constitute a whole new class of strategically important tools. These could not be developed using today's procedural, deterministic programming methods, because some degree of uncertainty-and/or a very large number of variables-is involved. "

He reports IMM is beginning its push toward optimization by implementing expert-like systems. These capture the logic of one or more domain experts, and allow even novices to arrive at the same results an expert would.

"Expert-like systems deliver good results, but are rigidly deterministic in nature," says Hess. "We'll expand these efforts into more flexible, inferistic, knowledge-based expert systems as we gain enough experience to trust this approach."

A distinguishing feature of true, knowledge-based expert systems is separation of the knowledge base from the inference engine. (An inference engine was once defined by Stanford's Prof Edward Feigenbaum, a pioneer in expert systems, as "a set of rules for good guessing.") Separation of the two allows prototype systems to grow into full-fledged expert systems without the need for expensive reprogramming.

"If a prototype expert system needs to be improved," Hess explains, "you simply add to the knowledge base. Doing so gives the inference engine more knowledge to work with, and you don't have to rewrite the logic."

An example of an expert-like system being implemented at IMM is a software module for selecting purchased parts. "As a true custom builder, we carry very little inventory," says Hess. "Instead, we purchase about $65-million worth of parts and components each year.

"Our purchasors page through numerous vendor catalogs to select all these parts. To automate and optimize this function, our on-line, expert-like system follows the logic of our best purchasor in each domainthat is, each category of parts, such as electric motors.

"By using this new computer system, even our greenest novice can select parts as skillfully and consistently as would our best expert. Results include optimum part performance for the customer, and higher profits for IMM."

Automatic NC

Another expert-like system being implemented at IMM is PPGNC, which stands for Process Planning and Generative Numerical Control. Working with Automation Technology Products (ATP), a software developer based in Campbell, CA, IMM seeks to implement a system that captures the methods, tooling, fixturing, and logic for tool-path generation employed by expert NC programmers.

To use this logic, PPGNC starts with a feature-based solid model constructed by a design engineer. The system "interrogates" this part geometry to learn its features, and uses key data-e.g., feature identification, point of application, orientation, and internal tolerances-to access a process dictionary. The system then retrieves all processes required for the part, and automatically generates an NC part program.

Now going into production testing, the PPGNC system is based on ATP's Cimplex manufacturing software. This includes modules for database management, feature-based solid modeling, finite element analysis, and manual NC programming, as well as process planning and automatic NC programming.

An additional module, called NC Verification, enables a programmer to simulate removal of volumes of material during the machining process. Doing this for all tool paths in all setups yields an as-manufactured representation of the part, thus verifying program accuracy.

In the more advanced realm of true expert systems, IMM has achieved one small but encouraging success. "We worked with our peers in Ingersoll Cutting Tool Co," Hess relates, "to replace a deterministic database and program with a prototype knowledge base and inference engine. Within two days, users of this fledgling expert system had achieved startling results, breaking the back of a stubborn problem. We're all quite excited about the possibilities of true expert systems. "

Adoption of expert-system technology will enable IMM to tie top managers and executives into the company's internal, local-area network. "The work done by most executives is inferistic," Hess says. "That is, it deals with probabilities and incomplete data, and calls for judgment. Adoption of expert systems will enable us to bring executive judgment, a strategic type of thinking, into the information loop.

Expanding their communications system beyond the factory walls, IMM is building electronic links with suppliers and customers on a global network. "This will allow direct communications by means of international electronic mailboxes," says Hess. "Individuals in IMM, and in supplier and customer organizations, will be able to talk desk to desk, person to person."

Besides enabling international transmission of messages, IMM's expanded network will carry standard forms used in electronic data interchange (EDI) with suppliers and customers. Examples of common EDI forms are purchase orders, waybills, and invoices.

In addition, the network will carry graphics files-e.g., CAD drawings for parts and assemblies-used in technical data interchange (TDI). "We're now negotiating with a vendor for the EDI portion of our network, " Hess reports, " and we're insisting that it be expandable to include TDI."

He expects TDI to gain great importance during the next few years. "General Motors, for instance, has already had a meeting with many of its vendors regarding TDI," says Hess. "There's a lot of activity in this technology, and it's all userdriven. "

Climate for change

According to Hess, corporate culture at IMM is especially conducive to the types of practical innovation he describes. "We're a privately held company, with owners interested in its long-term success," he says. "We enjoy a sensible, uncomplicated devotion to excellence.

"Then too, we serve customers in the automotive, aerospace, and construction equipment industries, whose futures are tied to exploitation of new manufacturing technology. These customers are receptive to innovation, and even demand it."

He sees one possible deterrent to change: employee resistance. "Until the new systems become robust and production-worthy, employee fear of the unknown, along with their personal insecurities, can make implementation go quite slowly.

"Here as always, though, our secret to success is having employees participate in the planning. If they're part of the action, they'll want to make new systems work. Following up with effective training will enable the new systems to work. "

Skeptics may argue that IMM is infatuated with technical innovation, perhaps even for its own sake. To that notion Hess replies, "If we can allocate resources just slightly better than do our competitors, we're able to offer cost leadership. This gives our customers the most value for their money, and allows us to underbid competitors; or, to bid at the same price and make a higher profit.

"In either case," Hess concludes, our implementation of advanced manufacturing technologies means we end up being a stronger competitor-and a survivor. "