Using UML as domain specific modeling-language for the construction and maintenance of simulation-models

Abstract

Many domains require the rapid development of highly adaptable simulation models. From the viewpoint of the industrial software development process, it is important to integrate the construction and maintenance of these systems into the standard software engineering process. For the realization of simulation models in the area of circuit-board production, we show how these requirements can be met by using the UML (Unified Modeling Language) standard design language as a notation in order to simplify the construction and maintenance of simulation models. We show how the modeling concepts of the simulation area can be introduced into UML and can be automatically translated into simulation models. Concretely, we describe transformation rules for translating a simulation model built in UML into the representation of an industrial-strength simulation tool (ARENA)