Following quickly on the heels of the DCS gateway approach was a broader
and more sophisticated-sounding movement to encourage the convergence of all
computer-based domains under the label of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
(CIM). CIM was a movement that virtually sprang up overnight. As soon as it hit the
market, it seemed every industrial player wanted to have CIM. Unfortunately, CIM was
more slogan than substance. Business managers typically viewed CIM as providing
the information they required in order to run the business, while technologists viewed
CIM as a way of meeting managements requests for data and getting on with other
important work. It is not that people did not know what CIM was; everybody seemed
to have a strong definition. It was just that no two definitions matched. Industrial
companies spent millions of dollars connecting every intelligent system and device in
their operation together, and when they had accomplished this feat, nothing seemed
to work any better than it had before. Systems integrators made fortunes during the
CIM era and plants were not performing any better. Figure 17-6 presents an overview
of an actual CIM implementation design from this era.
The problem was that connecting different systems and devices together does not
solve any business problems. Rather, it only overcomes communication barriers initially
introduced by the technology itself. Overcoming technical barriers is an important first
step, but business value improvement comes from developing solutions that address
business issues once the barriers fall. The latter step was seldom made. Integration is
valueless in and of itself, and only adds value if it is done to solve some larger business
problem. The CIM movement presents a classic example of an abnormal focus on the
technology of information and automation without much focus on the business of
manufacturing and production. Such approaches seldom—if ever—add value to the
business. So much money was spent on integration during this era with no visible
benefits that many industrial business managers became jaded about spending on
automation and business information technology.
Somewhat in parallel with the CIM movement, there was a corresponding
movement in the development of communication standards. The idea was standard
ways of communicating between systems would significantly reduce the cost and
effort involved in integrating systems together. One of the first efforts in this regard
was the Manufacturing Automation Protocol (MAP) sponsored by General Motors.
GM was one of the world’s largest purchasers of automation technology and had
considerable clout in the industry as a result. They saw value in connecting their
automation and business systems together and attempted to drive the MAP standard
throughout the automation industry. MAP never really caught on across the larger
manufacturing industry and this movement slowly died out. The communication
standard that did catch on across industry during the 1980s was the predefined
Ethernet standard. Ethernet had many of the characteristics required in industrial
environments and had proven stability, and is the basis of most computer-to-computer
industrial and business networks in use today
