Enabling Flexible Manufacturing Systems by Using Level of Automation as Design Parameter

Published

August 19, 2009

Author(s)

Bjoern J. Johansson, Asa Fasth, Johan Stahre, Juhani Heilala, Swee K. Leong, Yung-Tsun T. Lee, Frank H. Riddick

Abstract

Handling flexibility in an ever changing manufacturing environment is one of the key challenges for a successful industry. By using tools for virtual manufacturing, industries can analyze and predict outcomes of changes before taking action to change the real manufacturing systems. This paper introduces a simulation tool which can be used to analyze how choice in level of automation influence on the overall system performance. Determining a good level of automation with redundancy options can provide the manufacturing system with high flexibility for handling changes in specific unpredictable events occurring in the system such as machine failures, lack of quality, lack of materials, lack of resources etc. By utilizing a standardization effort from National Institute of Standards and Technology, the tool development assures a generic interface towards other data sources both upstream and downstream from the simulation perspective.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the 2009 Winter Simulation Conference

Conference Dates

December 13-16, 2009

Conference Location

Austin, TX

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Discrete-Event Simulation, Level Of Automation, Manufacturing standard

Citation

Johansson, B. , Fasth, A. , Stahre, J. , Heilala, J. , Leong, S. , Lee, Y. and Riddick, F. (2009), Enabling Flexible Manufacturing Systems by Using Level of Automation as Design Parameter, Proceedings of the 2009 Winter Simulation Conference, Austin, TX, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=903201 (Accessed October 10, 2025)