Analysis and Reconfiguration of a Manufacturing Cell through Discrete Event Simulation

Discrete event simulation is rapidly asserting itself as an important and valuable tool for experimenting with different “what if” scenarios concerning manufacturing systems, in order to avoid complex analysis and experimentation, that can be impractical or non cost-effective. In this paper, an existing manufacturing cell is modelled and simulated with the aim to examine the system’s performance in terms of productivity, utilization of available resources, bottlenecks in the system, etc. The visual and numerical analysis of the simulation is used as a basis to suggest possible areas of improvement that could increase efficiency and productivity of the manufacturing cell, and a new simulation model is built in order to evaluate the effects of the proposed reconfiguration on the cell.