Identification and specification of standard modules in production for a material flow simulation

The use of material flow simulation in production allows early testing of production scenarios, thus reducing overall time for production planning. However, initial modelling introduces additional expenses. One way to reduce these expenses is the use of reusable standard modules. This paper presents a method for the identification and specification of standard modules in production in order to reuse them in different material flow simulation models. The method uses company internal hypotheses about existing modules for the identification of standard modules. For the specification, the method provides a set of models, which serve as a basis for the implementation of the standard modules in a material flow simulation. The concept is demonstrated with an application example.