Simulation use in manufacturing and an application with Arena language

Ill ABSTRACT In a world where complexity, dynamism, and change dominate, it becomes vital to understand systems behavior and the parameters that affect performance. This situation can be generally observed in the development of manufacturing processes; activities in themselves characterized by complexity and change. To represent, analyze and evaluate this complex, dynamic reality; the need for a model should be recognized. Models address a wide range of manufacturing system design and operational issues and are therefore essential tools in many facets of the manufacturing system design process. As seen from ample empirical evidence and as this thesis will show, one of the most powerful modeling techniques in the manufacturing industry is simulation. Simulation is defined as the process of building a model of a real system and conducting experiments on this model for the purpose of understanding the behaviour of the system and evaluating various strategies for the operation of the system. Simulation thus provides analysis, description and evaluation capabilities of systems, and if successfully applied can support collaborative work across organizational boundaries and thereby improve information and communication. By these means, simulation can significantly improve system knowledge, system lead time, increase utilization and productivity and support decision making throughout an organization. Simulation also increases the awareness of performance measurements and emphasizes the importance of those measures to the people involved in the organization. In fact, simulation is fundamental to the assessment of a new manufacturing system design or operations management policy since by implementing stochastic or deterministic models, using real dynamic performance parameters. Its purpose here is simple: to support correct decisions throughout the manufacturing process, thereby increasing the quality of those decisions. In this thesis, the aim is to increase the throughput of one of the assembly lines of a television production plant by determining the bottleneck process and minimizing both the queueing times and the total system time. Using Arena simulation language based on Siman, the assembly line is modelled and tested utilizing diffrent operation policies and increase in production by 10% is realized.