Supporting Human Interactions within Integrated Manufacturing Systems

Application integration is a focus of many major research initiatives. A driving force behind application integration is a desire for enterprise-wide integration of organizational business processes. On the surface, increased application integration appears advantageous – people are freed from mundane tasks and thus can focus on more serious issues. Yet, there are consequences that are not always recognized or appreciated. Specifically, the relevance of human participation within integrated systems often is underdeveloped, thus increasing the potential for integrated systems that dismiss rather than empower users. In this paper, we present the work of one research initiative (CIIMPLEX) that is examining the relevance of human collaborations as part of its manufacturing integration research efforts. The emphasis of the paper is on the principles of the proposed approach rather than details of the current implementation.