An Architecture for a Generic Data-Driven Machine Shop Simulator

Published

October 1, 2002

Author(s)

Charles R. McLean, Albert T. Jones, Yung-Tsun Lee, Frank H. Riddick

Abstract

In most cases, the effort required to develop a meaningful simulation for a small machine shop exceeds the resources available. Small shops typically do not have staff with appropriate technical qualifications required to develop custom simulations of their operations. If staff or consultants are available, shop management is often unwilling to invest the funds, time, and effort required for simulation modeling activities. Part of the problem is due to the fact that commercial simulation software packages are not designed to use traditional shop data in its native format. Furthermore, there are no standard formats for much of the data used by these shops. The objective of the research described in the paper is to develop a software architecture, data interfaces, and a prototype generic machine shop simulator that can be readily, reconfigured for use by a large number of small machine shops. The data interfaces are being defined in the Extensible Markup Language (XML). The project is being carried out under the Software Engineering Institute?s (SEI) Technology Insertion, Demonstration, and Evaluation (TIDE) Program and the Systems Integration for Manufacturing Applications (SIMA) Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The paper provides an overview of the project, reviews prior work in this area, summarizes our progress to date, and briefly describes future work.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference

Conference Location

San Diego, CA, USA

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Interface Standards, Machine Shop Data Structures, Manufacturing Simulation, TIDE Program

Citation

McLean, C. , Jones, A. , Lee, Y. and Riddick, F. (2002), An Architecture for a Generic Data-Driven Machine Shop Simulator, Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, San Diego, CA, USA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=821778 (Accessed April 27, 2024)