Communications and standards in CIM T
i he developments in the technology of communications and the implication of these developments for the whole of the manufacturing community are of paramount importance. It is essential that manufacturing industry is aware of and able to take advantage of these developments as it is to exploit to the full the potential which computer integration offers. This issue of CIMS features a number of papers which explore some of these topics.
Mr Heikki H~imm/iinen and his colleagues are contributing to the DIMUN project of the RACE programme which is funded by the EEC. Their paper 'Integrated communication in CIM' discusses the impact of integrated broadband communications technology on CIMS. After reviewing briefly the related standards the authors present an object-oriented architecture and describe two pilot implementations with which they are involved. The first of these, PAGES agent implementation, undertakes the integration of multimedia project interchanges and relational databases for the purpose of inter-factory order management in lift manufacture at the Kone Corporation, Awans, Belgium. The second pilot study at the University of Bremen, FRG integrates data, voice and video links for communication in mechanical engineering manufacture.