Optimising advanced container handling technologies via distributed simulation/emulation

Simulation technology is state of the art in planning new terminals and reorganising existing ones. Typically the systems used for simulation are working offline and all information have to be entered into the model before running the scenarios. This effort can be reduced by combining the terminal operation system (TOS) with the simulation model using the parameters which are stored within the TOS. In this combination the material flow as well as the control system including all strategies has to be rebuild within the simulation. In a next step not only some defining parameters but the strategies theirselves are used in the simulation by coupling the whole TOS to the simulation. This kind of simulation, where only the material flow is build in, is called emulation. Splitting the whole simulation into different modules (the TOS and the device emulators) is the base for the distributed system. Typical emulation systems are often developed for just one application and therefore use very restricted communication protocolls. The DeCoNet framework is the base for an open distributed emulation network where each module may be realised using its own development environment and operation systems.