Optimization and analysis of performance in simulation

Simulation in manufacturing has traditionally been used for high level capacity planning. Simulation use is rapidly growing in other fields such as scheduling, detailed equipment models, and application specific models for use in emulation, engineering, sales and marketing. This growth can be attributed to the ability of simulation software tools to more accurately model manufacturing and material handling operations than with traditional simulation tools. It is not unheard of today to have the ability to create a model of an automated system with near 98 percent accurate representation. Much of the recent focus from software vendors has been to increase the ability to accurately depict manufacturing operations. Until very recently, the simulation industry suffered greatly with its inability to analyze complex manufacturing systems in enough detail to provide optimum or near optimum solutions to the problems being addressed. The paper considers performance optimization in simulation