COLLABORATIVE COMPONENT-BASED SIMULATION: SUPPORTING THE DESIGN OF ENGINE ASSEMBLY LINES.

Collaborative component based simulation.pdf

This paper introduces and critiques recent project work carried out by Consultants at Lanner Group in Collaboration with Manufacturing Engineers and Simulation Specialists at Ford Motor Company's PowerTrain Operations. These projects enable Simulation Specialists and manufacturing Engineers alike to model and experiment with planned Engine Assembly lines. Since so much commonality exists, both between different assembly lines and between successive iterations of the design of a single line, the repeated use of model constructs in a rigorous and pre-ordained manner has proved highly successful. The evolving methodology used has ensured both enhanced quality and improved cost-effectiveness. By using a spreadsheet interface to define the model and then only building the model at runtime, great flexibility in the design of potential experiments is afforded. Also, the manufacturing Engineer without specialist knowledge of WITNESS (the simulation package used) is empowered to build simulation models of engine assembly lines by being presented with a model building interface highly specialised to their own domain and terminology. The methodology moves away from traditional simulation model building, with the model developer concentrating instead on developing a portfolio of sub-models (modules) representing processes on the line at the required level of detail, and constructing a simulation model (or shell) that will take spreadsheet interface output and use this to create and run a model collecting and linking these modules. The flexibility and speed of development afforded by Component-Based Simulation is contributing to improved Business Process Management at Ford PowerTrain – improvements that, at the time of writing, continue to be adopted on a global scale.