factory floor simulation

Question

I would like to create a simulation of a factory floor, and I am looking for ideas on how to do this. My thoughts so far are:

• A factory is a made up of a bunch of processes, some of these processes are in series and some are in parallel. Each process would communicate with it's upstream and downstream and parallel neighbors to let them know of it’s through put

• Each process would it's own basic attributes like maximum throughput, cost of maintenance as a result of through put

Obviously I have not fully thought this out, but I was hoping somebody might be able to give me a few ideas or perhaps a link to an on line resource

update: This project is only for my own entertainment, and perhaps learn a little bit alnong the way. I am not employed as a programmer, programming is just a hobby for me. I have decided to write it in C#.

Answer 1

Simulating an entire factory accurately is a big job.

Firstly you need to figure out: why are you making the simulation? Who is it for? What value will it give them? What parts of the simulation are interesting? How accurate does it need to be? What parts of the process don't need to be simulated accurately?

To figure out the answers to these questions, you will need to talk to whoever it is that wants the simulation written.

Once you have figured out what to simulate, then you need to figure out how to simulate it. You need some models and some parameters for those models. You can maybe get some actual figures from real production and try to derive models from the figures. The models could be a simple linear relationship between an input and an output, a more complex relationship, and perhaps even a stochastic (random) effect. If you don't have access to real data, then you'll have to make guesses in your model, but this will never be as good so try to get real data wherever possible.

You might also want to consider to probabilities of components breaking down, and what affect that might have. What about the workers going on strike? Unavailability of raw materials? Wear and tear on the machinery causing progressively lower output over time? Again you might not want to consider these details, it depends on what the customer wants.

If your simulation involves random events, you might want to run it many times and get an average outcome, for example using a Monte Carlo simulation.

To give a better answer, we need to know more about what you need to simulate and what you want to achieve.