Inter-enterprise planning of manufacturing systems applying simulation with IPR protection

Discrete Event Simulation is a well-proved method to analyse the dynamic behaviour of manufacturing systems. However, simulation application is still poor for external supply chains or virtual enterprises, encompassing several legal entities. Most conventional simulation systems provide no means to protect intellectual property rights (IPR), nor methods to support cross-enterprise teamwork. This paper describes a solution to keep enterprise models private, but still provide their functionality for cross-enterprise evaluation purposes. Applying the new modelling system, the inter-enterprise business process is specified by the user, including a specification of the objects exchanged between the local models. The required environment for a distributed simulation is generated automatically. The mechanisms have been tested with a large supply chain model.