Modelling of a computer integrated manufacturing and management system as a tool of organization improvement

This paper presents a predicted target architecture of an integrated manufacturing and management system, based on a metropolitan-type intranet and an industrial process control and monitoring network. Such systems are urgently required by prospective users, especially large-scale manufacturing enterprises. Nevertheless, neither big manufacturers of computer integrated manufacturing systems nor big manufacturers of computer integrated systems are willing to develop combined computer integrated manufacturing and management systems. To evaluate performance, a method developed for packet switching networks with end-to-end acknowledgement was applied. The paper describes the investigations carried out for the case study. Some consideration is given to the performance evaluation accuracy, based on the validation work results obtained from analytical work, simulation and measurements on the Polish pilot wide area network.