Research Paper On IMS Design

The JC Gear Company has decided to initiate a project aimed at automating its production planning and control system. Among the options, the company focuses on two alternatives: (1) purchasing the most suitable system off of the shelf and modifying it according to its individual production needs; or (2) developing a system

Assessment of Problem: Clearly describe the problem in your work unit and your plan to solve the problem.

The next big upgrade to the assembly line was in the decade of the War. This is when “robots” were first introduced to the assembly lines. This was developed by the vice president of manufacture, Delmar Harder. This was a chance to see what automation could possibly do for the line. These “robots” did not run purely by themselves, the workers still played a large role. With this new-found knowledge, Ford was able to open a self-regulating plant for sheet metal stamping.

“Racing, competing, it's in my blood. It's part of me, it's part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else” says racer Ayrton Senna. For a little over 100 years the International Motor Contest Association (IMCA) has been running races. The IMCA is one of the most popular associations to race dirt track. Dirt track racing provides a pastime for hundreds to thousands of people worldwide.

The open systems model can be used to diagnose these problems, identify their causes, find the best solutions, and provide recommendations (Harrison, 2004).

Automated manufacturing is another application of automation and by far, it is the most important and useful in the United States. This practice of automation is used to produced things in a factory way. Consequently, many of the products that consumers purchase are the result of automated manufacturing. Some of these products include automobiles, refrigerators, dishwashers and videogame consoles like the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Today there are numerous industries applying automated manufacturing including the airline, automotive, mining, oil and food production industries (Vassar).

To consider what enterprise architecture means, it is important to understand its origin. All architecture within information technology can track its ancestry back to the lessons learned from building architecture. Enterprise Architecture is the description and visualization of the structure, a blueprint if you will, of a given area of contemplation, its elements and their collaborations and interrelations links vision, strategy and feasibility, focusing on usability durability and effectiveness. Architecture enables construction, defining principles, rules, standards and guidelines,

Do you have the ability to see every piece of mail that you send out? The USPS's Intelligent Mail barcode, known as IMb for short, lets you encode letters and flats for tracing. It provides valuable information for each piece of mail being processed by the Post Office. It can be a valuable addition to your direct mail campaigns.

After a thorough analysis of the presented options, our team has come to the conclusion that “Robots R Us” should be selected for our new manufacturing process. Although switching to fully autonomous manufacturing will be a major and somewhat controversial transition for our company, the economic benefits of this option lead to it being the most beneficial to our long term success. Not only does “Robots R Us” bring us to profitability faster than any other option, but also provides us with the highest profit margins of any manufacturing option presented.

People, process and technology are one commonly used distinction. Process, organisation and technology are another. Andrew Campbell of Ashridge Business School refers to five domains: Process; Information systems; Locations and buildings; Organization and people; and Suppliers and business partners. In addition, an organization is a complex system. An operating model breaks this system into components, showing how it works. It can help different participants understand the whole; can help those making changes check that the whole will still work; also help those transforming an operation coordinate all the different changes that need to happen. Furthermore, there are four different operating models:

design, implement, and evaluate information systems, process, component, or programs and to source design alternatives for various organizational IT-based solutions;

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a process of describing the structure and behavior of an enterprise (including its information systems), then planning and governing changes to improve the integrity and flexibility of the enterprise.

Boeing made use of lean techniques in their production system and increased its production by 50% and also reduced its floor space by 40%. Assembling a Boeing 737 is a typical job. Workers should take 367,000 parts, an same number of bolts, rivets, other equipment and 36 miles (58 kilometres) of electrical wire and then keep them all combined to make an airplane [2]. Engineers to machinists were involved in lean (reducing waste) in the factory. By creating an assembly line, aircraft will pass through the workers were they going to concentrate on assembling. Allocating all employees in the factory building and organising special teams helped a lot to solve the errors in the assembly line [2]. In the assembly line, there are eight beacon lights which reflect the production status. If everything is good it shows green colour. If an error occurs, the worker will press a button and the green light will changes to yellow and the panel board will shows the category of the problem(which category it is related to). The worker will pass on to a computer and writes about the problem in a brief manner and the problem should be assigned to special team to solve it within 30 minutes if not, the light turns to purple and the assembly line will shuts down. This moving assembly is the icon of factory’s lean strategies.

In manufacturing, automation has replaced some dangerous, mundane, arduous and routine manual operations, for example, transportation of heavy parts, stamping of large parts, repetitive welding and bolt fastening. However, skilled operators still carry out critical manual processes in various industries such as aerospace, automotive and heavy-machinery. Most of these processes are complex because operators receive a high number of inputs or because the relations among inputs change dynamically over time (or both). These inputs are; ‎parts, tools, ‎information cues, ‎stimuli, data or ‎procedure [3]. In addition, if these inputs are affected by variability, the complexity of the process will increase.

The process design in operation management is to match all aspects of the organization with the customers’ needs and desires. This new approach is concerned with the production, inventory and delivery of products and services which at the end controls all the resources of the organization. The input includes all the labor, capital, and land; the process is the added value; the output is the final product or service; and there is the control or automation where they compare the feedback with the result and make any needed changes.