Application of Enterprise Modelling (EM) principles to improving the performance of a semi-automated production system

To cope with high levels of complexity, competition and change requirements, manufacturing enterprises (MEs) need to continuously improve their process and resource system performances. Enterprise Modelling (EM) is considered a prerequisite for enterprise integration and performance improvement because it can be used to capture relatively enduring knowledge about any specific business environment in which production systems will be deployed. With this prerequisite in mind, EM principles were deployed to capture and develop 'static' models of an SME. This provided detailed descriptions of enterprise production operations and their precedence relationships. A discrete event simulation tool was then used to develop time dependent 'dynamic' models of selected process segments of the specific case Enterprise Model. This allowed the computer execution of alternative production system designs to be assessed under SME specific changing scenarios and enabled suggestions for potential improvements to be made.