Pilot Implementation of the Core Manufacturing Simulation Data Model

While software for discrete event simulation (DES) has emerged into sophisticated tools for decision support in a wide range of contexts, the need to integrate DES tools with other applications is increasing. In the industrial engineering context, simulation engineers strive to use real world data, e.g., logs of machine breakdown, to make behavior of DES models imitate reality. However, the format used for describing simulation data is often specialized to the current situation. The Core Manufacturing Simulation Data (CMSD) is a collaborative effort with academia and industry to standardize the format used for simulation data, to facilitate data exchange among simulation and manufacturing applications. This paper describes the results from a pilot implementation study at Volvo Trucks, where CMSD was utilized as the data exchange format between two data systems and two DES models. The DES tools used were commercial software packages Unigraphics Plant Simulation and InControl Enterprise Dynamics. Generic and reusable interfaces for CMSD-file communication were developed for each of these tools. The CMSD interfaces were successfully connected to a model in each simulation tool describing the same manufacturing process. A stand alone application was developed to collect and analyze raw data and to create the CMSD file being used as input data for both models. The result is a system including raw data analysis, data reformatting, CMSD interfacing, and model execution. Based on the result, a generic methodology for CMSD interface development in DES tools has evolved. The most important conclusion is that CMSD data can be interpretable by both Plant Simulation and Enterprise Dynamics, and that it saves engineering development time during the model building phase.