Developing a Simulation Language for Flexible Manufacturing Systems

Abstract

This research was focused on developing an interactive simulation package for analyzing flexible manufacturing systems. The research consisted of three phases. The first phase consisted of identifying and defining the current status of flexible manufacturing systems as they exist in industry. In the second phase, the characteristics and capabilities of simulation languages were examined. The third phase then integrated the information obtain from phases one and two to provide the actual software. The software consists of over 100 subroutines for model description, model editing, model simulation, and system reporting. The results of the reserach were quite promising in the sense that a very useful tool was developed. Also, as is the case with most new software, several areas for addition and improvement were identified. Two of these areas were possibly adding graphics capabilities and adding a statistical analysis module.