A new method for the hierarchical modelling of productive systems

Abstract

Industry reorganization and the increase in the automation level of productive processes results in the augmentation of complexity of the interactions among enterprise subsystems related to monitoring and control. Analysis techniques are used to deal with the complexity, design of new productive systems, and improve the performance of existing systems. In this context there is currently a special focus in distributed simulation. It deals with the execution of simulation in physically dispersed computers connected through a network. In order to explore the potential of distributed simulations, this paper proposes a new method for the hierarchical modeling of productive systems proper for distributed environment. The application of the method is illustrated through an example. This method has been successfully applied to a number of case studies in order to confirm its effectiveness. Copyright © 2006 International Federation for Information Processing.