An object-oriented intelligent design tool to aid the design of manufacturing systems

Manufacturing systems design appears to be an excellent area for applying artificial intelligence (Al), object-oriented techniques and computer simulation methods, however, so far there have been limited research on integrating Al, object-oriented techniques and simulation techniques for manufacturing systems design. In this paper, an integrated approach for manufacturing systems design is introduced which consists of the developing and testing of alternative designs using an integrated system SBDSS. SBDSS mainly consists of two subsystems, Object Library Modeler and Simulation Engine with its manager. Using SBDSS, decision makers (DMs) can evaluate alternatives in manufacturing and production, e.g. annual production plan under certain circumstances through scenario simulations. DMs can also test a set of virtual organizations reflecting business process reengineering before a real change is made, as well as testing a virtual manufacturing process for a newly designed product, The paper describes three possible application cases including centralized versus decentralized organizational structure, global goal-oriented planning and highly integrated information systems to illustrate the flexibility of the system. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.