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The manufacturing world is always in mutation, at this time shifting from economy of scale to globalization and customer satisfaction leading to economy of scope. While this enforces the need for more integration, it has severe implications on the deployment of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) in manufacturing enterprises. The paper reviews some CIM technical issues requiring further research, especially the information technology (IT) issue, to better address user requirements in designing and manufacturing their products. >

The basic concepts of CIM-OSA, an open systems architecture for CIM, being developed by AMICE are presented. The function view and the information view of CIM-OSA are discussed and illustrated. They provide a unique set of advanced features to model functionality, behavior, information and resources of CIM systems at three distinct levels (requirements definition, design specification and implementation description). >