Practical approach to experimentation in a simulation study

Simulation study of complex production facilities can be a challenging task for manufacturing engineers as it requires skills to build the models and to conduct experiments. Accurate modeling but inadequate experimentation may lead to poor decision and can be detrimental particularly when financial investment is involved. This paper proposes a practical approach to simulation experimentation in the context of simulation study of an engine assembly line. The overall aim of the study was to increase the productivity and efficiency of the line. The approach was deployed in the form of a methodology that was used to select the most feasible outcome from a series of simulation experiments, taking into account the minimum effort/investment needed to implement the improvement.