Concepts, models and methods for the design of production management systems

Abstract This paper gives an overview on the concepts, models, methods and commercial software packages for production management systems (PMS). We start by presenting the concepts and explaining what is production management, its position and role in CIM, and the structure of PMS. Then we will talk about some concepts relating to MRP, kanban and JIT. The economic aspects and performance indicators of PMS are not ignored. Next we will present the state-of-the-art in the field of PMS models ( cam-i, icam, nbs, mmcs, pac , etc.), as well as simulation models. Then we give a state-of-the-art on PMS design methods, in particular the sadt, ssad, merise, grai, ecograi and gim methods. We also present what we consider the three most promising approaches for the PMS design in the future: CIM-OSA, impacs and FOF, which are currently developed within the European ESPRIT programme. Finally a brief summary on the packages used in France for production management is given at the end of the paper.