Performance analysis of distributed strategies for material flow control of modular production systems based on discrete event simulation

Modular production systems are an excellent possibility to meet the increasing complexity of production tasks, which result form a rising number of simultaneously produced product variants. These systems consist very often of standard modules, which can be connected randomly via a fixed linked transportation system; so different requirements can be accomplished. This flexibility results in a high degree of complexity for the material flow control that is increased additionally when the dynamic behaviour of the system is strongly raised by high product variety and fluctuating production mixes. Other factors having negative effects on the dynamic behaviour of the system are parasitic drag that are found in every production, like failures in work stations or in the transportation system, dead times or maintenances, in this paper different material flow strategies for the application in variant rich production environments are analysed: station oriented routing, task oriented routing, task oriented routing with load balancing and workpiece centred, agent oriented routing with consideration of priorities. These strategies were examined with two models of production systems in different scenarios on their characteristics by an event discrete simulator