Marcus Frantzén

Aggregated line modeling for simulation and optimization of manufacturing systems

In conceptual analysis of higher level manufacturing systems, for instance when the constraint on system level is sought, it may not be very practical to use detailed simulation models. Developing detailed models on supply chain level or plant wide level may be very time consuming and might also be computationally costly to execute, especially if optimization techniques are to be applied. Aggregation techniques, simplifying a detailed system into fewer objects, can be an effective method to reduce the required computational resources and to shorten the development time. An aggregated model can be used to identify the main system constraints, dimensioning inter-line buffers, and focus development activities on the critical issues from a system performance perspective. In this paper a novel line aggregation technique suitable for manufacturing systems optimization is proposed, analyzed and tested in order to establish a proof of concept while demonstrating the potential of the technique.

Production simulation education using rapid modeling and optimization: successful studies

A common issue facing many simulation educators is that students usually spend excessive time to struggle with the programming and statistic parts of the simulation courses, and simply very little time to learn running systems analysis. If the students are coming from industry, and not the campus, then the problem becomes even worse. We observed this problem around 2005 and started to develop a new simulation software, a factory conceptual design toolset, partly aimed to address this problem. A new set of educational courses has since then been developed around the software for teaching production systems analysis, with both the campus students and managers/engineers from industry in mind. In this paper, we briefly introduce the software and share our experiences and some representative, successful studies conducted by the students in the past years.