Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing - Overview

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".

The ICAM program was visionary in showing that a new approach was necessary to achieve integration in manufacturing firms. Wisnosky and Shunk developed a "wheel" to illustrate the architecture of their ICAM project and to show the various elements that had to work together. Wisnosky and Shunk were among the first to understand the web of interdependencies needed for integration. Their work represents the first major step in shifting the focus of manufacturing from a series of sequential operations to parallel processing.

The ICAM program has spent over $100 million to develop tools, techniques, and processes to support manufacturing integration and has influenced the CIM project efforts of many companies. The Air Force's ICAM program recognizes the role of data as central to any integration effort. Data is to be common and shareable across functions. The concept still remains ahead of its time, because most major companies will not seriously begin to attack the data architecture challenge until well into the 1990s. The ICAM program also recognizes the need for ways to analyze and document the major activities performed within the manufacturing establishment. Thus, from ICAM came the IDEFs, the standard for modeling and analysis in management and business improvement efforts. IDEF means ICAM DEFinition.