: Usländer, T.; Wimmer, P.

Abstract
Despite the admittedly hesitating, but increasing market acceptance of CIM communication standards such as MMS (Manufacturing Message Specification) the development and integration of CIME applications (CIM and Engineering) in a heterogenous hardware and software environment remains an enourmous cost factor. A very promising improvement of this situation is expected by the provision of a powerful software platform based upon standard components. The article describes the open and distributed software platform CCE (CIME Computing Environment) for the support of CIME applications. First, the essential requirements for an application-oriented software platform are described from the viewpoint of the user. Derived from these the system architecture of the CCE platform is considered by focussing on the properties of transparency of the information access method (eg. MMS, database access, file transfer,...), application-specific extensibility and re-usability of software. The article finishe s with a presentation of the benefits of such a platform in the light of a pilot installation at Mercedes-Benz.