Abstract:
The drive towards a more globally competitive market has led to an increase in demand
for goods and services on a global scale. As a result of this increase in productivity,
production systems are being designed and redesigned at an increased rate and that they
are becoming more innovative as they progress with time.
The challenge this research attempts to address is how to improve the ability of the UKbased
manufacturing industry to make a more effective decision during manufacturing
systems design/redesign by adopting simulation techniques as both strategic and
operational decision making tools. The aim of this research is to develop a classification
scheme based on cladistics and evolutionary analysis and to use this classification in the
development of a template based modelling library. The research focused on identifying
the existing manufacturing layout types, the various layout configurations that are being
used and template based model generation. Some of the major developments of the
research conducted were the construction of the manufacturing layout and component
based cladograms and the RapidSim generator.
A literature review on manufacturing systems layouts revealed the types of system
layouts which are most commonly used in the manufacturing sector as well as the
component configurations and characteristics which are found within each production
systems. This research makes a major contribution by providing a cladistical
classification of manufacturing systems layouts, an external interface for model building
and development and a set of recommendations, which when adopted may help increase
the use of template based simulation modelling. Based on the data analysis carried out,
the findings suggest that there is room for the development and implementation of a
template based modelling approach to the development of simulation based models. The
most important result obtained from the validation of the model was that the time taken
to build and run the model decreased significantly by around 65% when compared to the
conventional model building process.
