thumb|Online operations and support operations in an Integrated Computer Aided Manufacturing environment, 1977

Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) is a US Air Force program that develops tools, techniques, and processes to support manufacturing integration. It influenced the computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) project efforts of many companies.

The ICAM program was founded in 1976 and initiative managed by the US Air Force at Wright-Patterson as a part of their technology modernization efforts. The program initiated the development a series of standards for modeling and analysis in management and business improvement, called Integrated Definitions, short IDEFs.

Overview

The USAF ICAM program was founded in 1976 at the US Air Force Materials Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio by Dennis E. Wisnosky and Dan L. Shunk and others. In the mid-1970s Joseph Harrington had assisted Wisnosky and Shunk in designing the ICAM program and had broadened the concept of CIM to include the entire manufacturing company. Harrington considered manufacturing a "monolithic function".]]

Standard data models

To extract real meaning from the data, we must also have formulated, and agreed on, a model of the world the data describes. We now understand that this actually involves two different kinds of model:

  • Static associations between data and real-world physical and conceptual objects it describes—called the information model
  • Rules for use and modification of the data, which derive from the dynamic characteristics of the objects themselves—called the functional model

The significance of these models to data interchange for manufacturing and materials flow was recognized early in the Air Force Integrated Computer Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) Project and gave rise to the IDEF formal modeling project. IDEF produced a specification for a formal functional modeling approach (IDEF0) and an information modeling language (IDEF1). The more recent "Product Data Exchange Specification" (PDES) project in the U.S., the related ISO Standard for the exchange of product model data (STEP) and the Computer Integrated Manufacture Open Systems Architecture (CIMOSA) [ISO87] project in the European Economic Community have whole heartedly accepted the notion that useful data sharing is not possible without formal semantic data models of the context the data describes.

See also

  • CIMOSA
  • IDEF

References

Further reading

  • Charles Savage, 1996, Fifth Generation Management, Dynamic Teaming, Virtual Enterprising and Knowledge Networking, page 184, , Butterworth-Heinemann.
  • Joseph Harrington (1984). Understanding the Manufacturing Process.