Dynamic analysis of manufacturing cells: a dedicated simulation library and an empirical simulation study

The design of cellular manufacturing systems (CMS) is a complex decision process that, in general, has to be decomposed into several sub-problems. Analytical techniques have been used to tackle each of these sub-problems individually but its usage is limited when designing real-world CMS. Simulation tools enable the decision maker to capture the dynamic nature of CMS allowing the test of different designs and their evaluation through a wide set of performance measures. This research describes the structural modelling and implementation of a simulation template (simulation library) for the dynamic analysis of cellular manufacturing systems and illustrates its utilisation in the development of a real simulation study. The template was modelled using object-oriented concepts and some of its components were implemented in the simulation software ArenaO. The utilisation of the template in real CMS scenarios is allowing its validation and its continuous enhancement.