Traceability in Manufacturing Systems

Proposes that the role of traceability in manufacturing systems is to enable the history of events to be followed and compared with scheduled plans and predefined goals. Tracing techniques can be used to detect system status (status tracing), analyse system performance (performance tracing) and support decision making (goal tracing). Manufacturing systems are conceptualized as having the levels of strategy, planning and design, and operations. There is a need for all three forms of traceability at each manufacturing system level. The traceabilities approach provides a structured, holistic way of thinking about and designing manufacturing information systems which is not constrained by the physical system or by the narrower requirements of a computer management system.