A handbook for integrating discrete event simulation as an aid in conceptual design of manufacturing systems

Despite significant cost savings and the stride towards developing and implementing the virtual factory, few companies have managed to fully integrate simulation as a daily tool in their engineering processes. The objective of the paper is to explore the prerequisites for this integration, using discrete event simulation as an aid for high quality decision making in early phases (conceptual design and pre-study). The paper looks at three aspects of the prerequisites: technological, operational, and organizational and summarizes the main challenges connected to each one of the aspects. The main result presented in the paper is a proposal for a simulation handbook, to be used when integrating simulation into the engineering process. The strength of the handbook is the focus on operational and organizational issues, reflecting different roles with connection to simulation. Future work aims at validating the impact of the handbook.