Development of graphical software for CIM applications

Abstract

Flexibility, quality and cost advantages are three major factors motivating the introduction of CIM. However, lack of formalisms, tools, methodologies and organizational structures have slowed work in the CIM field. The development of application software capable of tailoring solutions to specific manufacturing problems from a set of existing and future CIM components, the automatic generation of friendly user interfaces to support individual user requirements, the design features that ensure the independence of application software, and the user interface software for accommodating changing manufacturing requirements are some of the key factors that determine the successful application of CIM. The Papillon prototype (developed under the ESPRIT research programme) presented here is based on sound software engineering principles, and has achieved an architecture which separates the application from the user interface, supports configurability of components and generates user interfaces without direct coding. Initially, pure application software with no graphics is built from a set of basic Papillon building blocks: graphical representations are then described by using the EASEL subsystem, and finally the user interface, which enables the user to ‘drive’ applications, is automatically generated. The EASEL subsystem is independent of the Papillon run-time system, and therefore different graphical user interfaces can be generated easily and evalauted at run-time with no need for recompilation. Fundamental concepts such as portability, configurability and reuse of methods and tools are major considerations in the overall design and implementation of the Papillon system. Although the primary emphasis is on CIM, the generic design of the Papillon system makes it an ideal environment for the development of graphical software for a wide range of applications in several fields.