The development of an object-oriented simulation system based on the thought process of the manufacturing system design

The purpose of this research is to develop an integrated evaluation environ ment for manufacturing system designs. In this paper, we analyzed the thoug ht process of manufacturing system design, and proposed a manufacturing sys tem model for planning and evaluation by using a thought process model. The model evaluates a manufacturing system's design from the abstracted design phase to the detailed design. Finally, a prototype system for simulation u sing an object-oriented methodology was developed and implemented for a flo w shop type manufacturing system design applying the proposed simulation mo del. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.