A model management system (MMS) for the design and operation of production lines

This work presents a prototype model management system (MMS) for the design and operation of manufacturing systems. The model management system classifies different models according to the type of the manufacturing system to which they apply and according to the particular technique employed. In its present state, the system comprises three different techniques, namely, analytical, simulation and artificial intelligence (AI) based techniques for production lines. The first two are evaluative methods, whereas the last one is a generative (optimization) method that solves the well-known buffer allocation problem in a production line. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, the development of an architecture of a MMS which provides a simple and intelligible framework for classifying different modelling techniques, enables the interaction among these models and does not restrict developers to follow a particular model development task. Second, the development of a knowledge based system, called ASBA,...