Integrated business modelling technique for decision support in the manufacturing environment

This paper describes the development of an integrated modelling technique for the evaluation of business strategies. The simulation-based technique is based on three levels; firstly, an innovative, easily configurable, manufacturing simulator; secondly an activity-based cost model; and thirdly, a high level strategic business model. The modular structure of the technique will allow the user to-choose whatever level of modelling is needed for that particular application. The first level of the technique has been verified and validated with respect to both another modelling package and a real manufacturing facility. An overall interface has been developed, which will form the basis for configuring all levels of the business model. The activity-based cost model constructed has been designed and developed to deal with such items as throughput, spoilage, etc. and also user defined variables, with an inbuilt facility to deal with sparse data. This has also been validated with manual input of data and gave less than a 0.1% variation with calculated operating costs. It is currently being integrated, via the interface, to enable simultaneous configuration with the manufacturing simulator.