FACILITATED DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION FOR INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is one of the most important simulation techniques in decision-making in several areas. Some authors state that small and large companies can benefit significantly through the utilisation of DES. Literature shows that most DES studies carried out are at large companies. Studies carried out at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been mostly explored on a one-off, case-by-case basis, given the characteristics and limitations of smaller companies. In order to expand DES studies in a wide range of companies, this article seeks to consider the SME characteristics and limitations prevent them from broadly adopting traditional (“hard”) DES. Then an alternative application of DES in “soft” mode was proposed. A review of facilitated DES frameworks was carried out. The frameworks were critically analysed in this review in relation to their adequacy to specific SME requirements and similar contexts. Finally, some issues and characteristics of these frameworks are presented that make directly applying in these contexts difficult. Furthermore, some suggestions are proposed for developing future facilitated DES frameworks. (Received in February 2022, accepted in May 2022. This paper was with the authors 3 weeks for 1 revision.).