Abstract
Due to the problem of manpower shortage, automatic production has become more and more important in most industries. At the same time, CIM is precious in the automation field because of the advancement of the computer technology. Even though a considerable number of successful cases have been reported in many other countries, the implementation of CIM systems is still not an easy task. A CIM system is typically a highly computerized system which consolidates all the production and management functions by the transformation of data through network. Therefore the network is not only the core of CIM but also the key of the success in CIM. Due to the complexity involved in the CIM network planning, this research intends to develop a decision-based methodology for network planning. Since network planning cannot be isolated from other planning activities, the decision mechanism was developed based on system integration concept and therefore some data generated in the CIM development procedure will be automatically retrieved for future network planning purpose. Basically, the developed decision mechanism is composed network standard module, system architecture module, operation system module, hardware module and objective construction module. By being experimented through real data, the methodology has been proved to have the capacity in shortening the CIM network planning time span.