Production Line Simulation Software

[Reney Shammo]

Modelsimulate, visualize and analyze production systems and logistics processes to optimize material flow and resource utilization for all levels of your plant planning, from global facilities and local plants to specific production lines.

Create well-structured, 3D hierarchical models of production facilities, lines and operations for fast and efficient modeling of discrete and continuous manufacturing processes using powerful object-oriented architecture and modeling capabilities.

Build and visualize in 3D using included libraries or external CAD data. Leverage the JT data format for 3D modeling and Siemens direct model technology for efficient loading and realistic visualization of large 3D simulation models without compromising simulation and analysis needs.

Model using objects within objects and models within models at all levels of the hierarchy. Items stored in libraries are maintained for all users and changes are automatically applied to all instances of those items wherever they are used. And those library items can be easily configured to specific requirements within a particular simulation.

Enjoy many built-in tools and graphical outputs to assess production system performance, including automatic bottleneck detection; throughput analysis; machine, resource and buffer utilization; energy consumption; cost analysis; Sankey diagrams and Gantt charts.

Teamcenter Share offers a rich set of features to aid everyday collaboration using Plant Simulation software. It contributes to making digital transformation more accessible, flexible and scalable for companies of all sizes.

Factory simulation is the process of using a computer model to understand and improve a real production system. Simulation technology allows organizations in the industry to analyze and experiment with their processes in a virtual setting, reducing the time and costs of physical testing. Materials, equipment, and personnel can all be considered within a simulation model, resulting in information that can maintain or improve production at the lowest possible cost.

FlexSim is a powerful yet easy-to-use software package for simulation modeling. A fast and accurate simulation engine is hidden behind drag and drop controls, drop-down lists, and many other intuitive features that make it accessible for anyone to build a model. All simulation models are created to scale and are presented using 3D visuals, so it becomes easy to view and recognize bottlenecks in the production line or other deficiencies within the system. FlexSim also gives decision makers the data to confirm their observations, with impressive statistical reporting and analysis built right into the software.

Arena Simulation Software enables manufacturing organizations to increase throughput, identify process bottlenecks, improve logistics and evaluate potential process changes. With Arena you can model and analyze process flow, packaging systems, job routing, inventory control, warehousing, distribution and staffing requirements.

Manufacturing operations are facing pressure to become more efficient than ever. At the same time, they are becoming more specialized. Optimization of manufacturing processes requires getting it right the first time. There is no room for guesswork. Understanding system interactions, variability and resource interactions is a must when evaluating improvement options. These interactions are critical to manufacturing and are almost impossible to model in a spreadsheet, leading to decisions that can miss significant aspects of the real system.

Manufacturing optimization is a computer-based model of your manufacturing process that can be used to validate, test and improve the performance of your process. Simulations in the virtual world can be used to predict and improve actual performance quickly, cheaply and with lower risk than tests in the real-world. The result is enabling companies to increase throughput and reduce cost by using operational models that incorporate relevant variability and system interactions. With a functional model, all of the following can be determined:

Arena is the leading global business process simulation solution, providing support to companies around the world. Arena enables manufacturers to implement production optimization solutions that will actually work in their operation.

Specific processes and strategies, such as JIT or Lean, can be modeled and simulated in manufacturing simulation software. This enables effective analysis, and provides an efficient way to experiment and reduce the costs of testing in the real world. AnyLogic helps improve manufacturing processes. It is powerful process simulation software with a specially designed Material Handling Library that simplifies the simulation of complex manufacturing systems and operations. The library helps when designing detailed models of production facilities and managing material workflows. To learn more, get our Material Handling Pack of related videos, case studies, and how-tos, or read our Material Handling Simulation white paper.

One of Tata Steel's steel manufacturing units showed potential for increasing the overall unit throughput by optimizing the internal logistics systems. The opportunity was in improving crane and ladle handling by introducing optimized process flows and testing different layout configurations.

Automotive industry leaders use autonomous mobile robots (AMR) in their production facilities to improve productivity. In this case study, Tesla Material Flow Engineer and former BMW Group PhD Student and AMR researcher, Maximilian Selmair, describes standard industry practice when deploying large-scale transporter fleets and...

The Airbus Group joined the European Union ARUM (Adaptive Production Management) project, which is focused on creating an IT solution for risk reduction, decision-making, and planning during new product ramp-ups. The project is aimed mainly at aircraft and shipbuilding industries. Simulation was chosen as a part of the ARUM...

Semiconductor demand is unstable, highly dependent on innovation cycles, and due to its volatility, the semiconductor supply chain is prone to the bullwhip effect. These challenges were compounded by supply chain shortages and the COVID crisis. This case study shows how supply chain engineers at Infineon optimized their supply...

The production line consists of 4 machines, each of which spends a certain random time working on 1 DVD. The third one can work on more than 1 DVD at the same time (max. 100). Also, the third one will always accept more DVDs to work on, as long it's capacity is What I have so far is that, with a random number generator (since each machine has random DVD processing time each time it starts working on a new DVD), I assigned a random processing time to each of the four machines, summed up their processing times for the total time spent in one-go production (totalProdTime = processTime1 + processTime2 + processTime3 + processTime4), and then I keep summing up those totalProdTime values until the total time of the whole simulation reaches the desired duration of the simulation specified by the user (totalProdTimeSim = totalProdTimeSim + mTotal.totalProdTime). Later I just verify whether the totalProdTimeSim has reached the desired time and that's it.

Now, the problem is that, this way, the production of the DVDs waits for one instance of production to finish all the way until the very end of the machine 4, and then the work begins on the second DVD, etc. What I want to do is that after machine 1 finishes it's work, and the second one begins its work, machine 1 begins work on another DVD with it's newly generated time. The same goes for all other machines. After machine 2 finishes work on a DVD, it immediately begins working on another DVD.

Now, since all machines have random processing times each time they start working on another DVD, it will often happen that one machine 'wants to work on another DVD' while the previous one hasn't finished its work on the current one. In this case, the idle machine just 'waits' for the previous machine to finish processing and then accepts the DVD from the previous machine.

So, in my example, we have that all the machines work one by one, but I want them all to work constantly, even after they finish working on the current DVD (except in the first iteration, where the further machines need to wait for the previous ones to forward them their DVD they previously worked on).

My sketch of how it should work can be found in the picture below. In the sketch all machines behave as if they constantly have something to work on, but should wait from the input from the previous machine.

If I were to write code to solve this, I would create a ProductionLine class that contains a list of Machine-objects, along with a DiskOuput counter. The ProductionLine-class would have a method ('timePasses') you can call to simulate the passing of time, say 1-second increments. This would in turn call onto the Machine-objects who would also have a timePasses method. The Machine knows how many calls of timePasses are needed before it finishes wirting a disk (the random amount of seconds). When a Machine finishes writing a disk, the timePasses object would return a value to indicate a disk was finished. The Machine would then reset the random number of seconds needed to write a disk and start over. The ProductionLine class knows that when timePasses returns a value, the DiskOuput counter should be incremented because a disk was finished.

Now, to make your machines dependent on the first disk... Your ProductionLine would have a list of Machines (the 'pool' of available machines in the line) and a list of RunningMachines (that are currently producing something). You would only call timePasses on running machines. When you call timePasses on ProductionLine the first time it would take a Machine from the pool, put in onto RunningMachines and call timePasses on it. Every time a call to timePasses on a Machine indicates that a new disk is ready, the ProductionLine could check if additional machines are available and if so, put them onto the RunningMachines-list and start working with it.

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