Forty undergraduate faculty in the area of Computer Integrated Manufacturing are being enhanced and their instructional capability improved by an intensive one week workshop. The need for enhanced capability in computer integrated manufacturing has been identified as a key component in a strategy to restore the competitiveness of our manufacturing industry. Through experiential teaching methods, faculty participants drawn from institutions currently considering the updating of their manufacturing engineering curriculum are being provided with an intensive overview of the CIM field. Particular emphasis is being placed on illustrating how these concepts can be successfully introduced into undergraduate engineering curricula. The CIM program developed and launched by the Engineering Management Department at UMR is providing an ideal basis for comparison and critical review. A five day 15 session program involving projects and demonstrations on CIM related areas, such as CAD/CAM, CIM, Computer Aided Management, Simulation Modeling, and Expert Systems is being held, with a two day follow-up one year later to discuss the problems in implementation.
