An approach and interface for building generic manufacturing Kanban-systems models

Simulation of manufacturing systems, historically the first major application area of discrete-event process simulation, is becoming a steadily more proactive and important strategy for achieving manufacturing efficiency. Concurrently, lean manufacturing has become a nearly essential corporate strategy to compete successfully in an increasingly austere and global business environment. Furthermore, industrial engineers responsible for supporting successfully competitive manufacturing operations have less and less time available for manipulating details deep within a simulation model in order to evaluate numerous complex alternatives. Convergence among these trends motivated the development of a generic manufacturing Kanban-systems simulator that has Kanban inventory optimization capability, and an accompanying interface, described in this paper.