Rapid discrete event simulation model development for complex traffic analysis

The tight integration of modern manufacturing systems, implementing lean and agile production paradigms, poses challenges to the project engineer assessing the impact of process changes. Discrete event simulation is accepted as an effective tool to model vehicle delivery movements, human paths and delivery schedules for modern assembly lines. The time to generate accurate models is a significant limitation of existing simulation-based optimisation methodologies. This paper presents a conveyor-based methodology to model complex traffic movements. By removing the need for AGV and human path modelling concepts, the time and cost of the model development process is significantly reduced. The proposed method has been successfully implemented using a commercial simulation package and provides a realistic visual representation, as well as accurate statistical results.