This short book is a collection of 13 essay-type pieces that loosely relate to an industrial computer network organization known as computer integrated manufacturing (CIM). CIM organizations provide a total integrated plantwide computer network that combines the computational assets of design, manufacturing, testing, purchasing, inventory, marketing, and accounting to support all computing functions within an industrial facility. CIM encompasses the current processing assets of computer-aided design, manufacturing process control, data processing, and management information systems as well as those functions and systems necessary to implement information exchange and control across the production life cycle. The author enthusiastically views this CIM capability as not only a significant step beyond today’s computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing processes but one that is essential to meeting the needs of a twenty-first century factory that is competitively responsive to fast-changing market demands.

The author states that a CIM-based manufacturing strategy is necessary to ensure high profitability across the entire product production operations because it improves the efficiency of both the production process and management decision making, from material deliveries to finished product sales. However, the author provides little to strongly support this assertion. In addition, the two case studies of British computer manufacturers seem to be merely excessive arm-waving in extrapolation of current trends toward higher levels of factory automation and integrated manufacturing data systems. Nevertheless, the trend is clearly toward higher network connectivity and more complex integrated manufacturing computer processes. The emerging technology underlying these processes will quickly date the material in this text; the chapters on robotics and machine vision are cases in point.

This book is not written for the technical reader but for the senior management of industrial manufacturing companies who would value a quick overview of future computer integrated business possibilities. However, the text is poorly written for such a senior management audience that needs more thorough qualitative and quantitative information on which to base a business investment in these integrated computer-based systems. Additionally, I cannot recommend this book to the senior technical production management reader, who would undoubtedly require more depth in the presentation of the many business issues involved in plant automation.