Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing

The ICAM program was founded in 1976 and initiative managed by the US Air Force at Wright-Patterson as a part of their technology modernization efforts.

The program initiated the development a series of standards for modeling and analysis in management and business improvement, called Integrated Definitions, short IDEFs.

[1] In the mid-1970s Joseph Harrington [2] had assisted Wisnosky and Shunk in designing the ICAM program and had broadened the concept of CIM to include the entire manufacturing company.

Their work represents the first major step in shifting the focus of manufacturing from a series of sequential operations to parallel processing.

The object of all of these recent efforts is to standardize the interchange of information in many aspects of product design, manufacture, delivery and support.

MHRC's research involves expanding the integrated computer-aided manufacturing definition (IDEF) approach to include the information flow as well as the material flow needed to support a manufacturing enterprise, as well as models to handle unscheduled events such as machine breakdowns or material shortages.