Ulrich Jessen

Classifications and conventions structure the handling of models within the digital factory

Today, the realization of the Digital Factory is the strategic goal of many manufacturing enterprises for the coming years. Up to now, the work has focused on the technical linkage of various planning tools. Now, the goal is to integrate aspects of the Digital Factory into the planning processes. Therefore, it is necessary to define a semantic correlation between the distributed models as well as the associated databases. Furthermore, a suitable presentation method has to be selected which is appropriate for the application within a specific task and for a specific target group.This article presents an approach, which introduces modelling conventions based on a common world view of its users by applying the metaphor of the Electronic Catalogue as well as a well-defined workflow in order to simplify the work with Digital Factory models as a substantial step towards the application of the Digital Factory to meet practical requirements.

The Integration of 3-D Visualization into the Simulation-based Planning Process of Logistics Systems:

The integration of information and communication tech nology into existing business processes effects all areas of a company, including factory planning. The structure of the process of change is based on model-supported pro cesses as well as tools and techniques that are already in use. These include established discrete event simulation tools that have been used in the area of production and logistics planning for several years, and innovative visual ization techniques such as 3-D animation, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Visualization has become very necessary in the planning, realization and operation of a factory because the data for the different target groups within a company, from the operating staff up to management, has to be processed into realizable in formation. The authors, motivated by this initial situation, have placed the conceptual universality of the use of meth ods in the foreground, using distributed architecture and the targeted use of 3-D modeling in logistics planning as an add-on to discrete event simulation. This article intro duces a generally applicable concept for the user-defined mapping of discrete event simulation models onto anima tion models, describes the aspects of realization, and con siders integration into an animation pipeline.

Simulation in Production and Logistics: Trends, Solutions and Applications

By reason of increasing product complexity and diversity of va riants and increasing system and network complexity as well as increasing demands on quality, flexibility, service time, and costs companies need efficient methods and procedure models for planning, redesigning and improving their pro duc tion and logistics systems. The management of logistics networks like supplier, pro duction, distribution, and transportation networks has become an important strategic task due to ongoing globalization of economy, too. Nowadays, simu lation is a well-established model-based analysis method for a lot of appli ca tions in this domain. This paper discusses the trends and solutions in development and research for simulation technology in production and logistics and high lights some current logistics applications.

Towards assisted input and output data analysis in manufacturing simulation: the EDASim approach

Discrete-event simulation has been established as an important methodology in various domains. In particular in the automotive industry, simulation is used to plan, control, and monitor processes including the flow of material and information. Procedure models help to perform simulation studies in a structured way and tools for data preparation or statistical analysis provide assistance in some phases of simulation studies. However, there is no comprehensive data assistance following all phases of such procedure models. In this article, a new approach combining assistance functionalities for input and output data analysis is presented. The developed tool - EDASim - focuses on supporting the user in selection, validation, and preparation of input data as well as to assist the analysis of output data. The proposed methods have been implemented and initial evaluations of the concepts have led to promising feedback from practitioners.

A technical concept for plant engineering by simulation-based and logistic-integrated project management

Customized planning, engineering and build-up of factory plants are very complex tasks, where project management contains lots of risks and uncertainties. Existing simulation techniques could help massively to evaluate these uncertainties and achieve improved and at least more robust plans during project management, but are typically not applied in industry, especially at SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). This paper presents some results of the joint research project simject of the Universities of Paderborn and Kassel, which aims at the development of a demonstrator for a simulation-based and logistic-integrated project planning and scheduling. Based on the researched state-of-the-art, requirements and a planning process are derived and described, as well as a draft of the current technical infrastructure of the intended modular prototype. First plug-ins for project simulation and multi-project optimization are implemented and already show possible benefits for the project management process.

A comparison of the usage of different approaches for the management of plant engineering projects

Customized planning, engineering and construction of one-of-a-kind products (like wind energy, biogas or power plants) are complex and contain a lot of risks and temporal uncertainties, e.g. of logistics and project schedules. Therefore the management of this kind of projects has to be supported by adequate methods for the estimation of project risks and uncertainties. Based on the results of the joint research project simject of the Universities of Paderborn and Kassel, which aims at the development of a demonstrator for simulation-based and logistic-integrated project planning and scheduling, this paper discusses the usage of different approaches for supporting project management of plant engineering projects. After a short introduction and description of the approaches to be compared a wind energy plant as evaluation model as well as the application of the different methods are presented. Additionally, the usage of the approaches is compared and the advantages and disadvantages are pointed out.

Delphi Study on evaluating information in simulation studies for manufacturing and logistics planning

Information is the key resource for performing simulation studies in manufacturing and logistics planning. To build the simulation model and to subsequently collect the requested simulation results, this information must have the necessary level of quality. To evaluate the influence of information quality on the quality of simulation study results, it is first of all essential that the quality of information be assessable. However, to evaluate quality, it is also necessary to know which information in the context of simulation studies will be deemed as generally relevant. To clarify this question, a Delphi Study about information in simulation studies was conducted. Based on the results of this Delphi Study, a basic overview of the relevant information for simulation studies in manufacturing and logistics can be given in a clearly arranged list.