An economic trade-off analysis experiment for integrating manufacturing systems computer software

Abstract In applications involving integration of individual manufacturing systems computer software modules there is often a need to write interface programs. Considering the possibility that the individual software modules may be coded by different individuals, under different condition, using different programming languages, programming styles, platforms and operating systems; the process of writing interface programs may not be trivial. While acknowledging the difficulties and potential inaccuracies involved in quantifyig the parameters involved in building such interface programs, an attempt is made to build a simplified model through the design of an experiment to evaluate potential trade-offs in such manufacturing software module integration tasks. The main conclusion draw from the analysis are that only a few integrations can often justify a generic integration architecture, and any further increase in complexity of the modules provides an even stronger ground for the generic architecture. These conclusions should provide greater insight into the integration process that the almost ad hoc knowledge that we presently have.