Uniform Data Structure for Production Simulation

One of the most widespread techniques to evaluate various aspects of a manufacturing system is discrete-event simulation (DES). However, building a simulation model of a manufacturing system is a difficult task and requires special competence. The majority of simulation studies aimed at analyzing a certain problem by a specific simulation model created by experts. This approach requires relatively high financial expenditures. The paper introduces an ongoing research aimed at developing an application to reduce the costs of a draft simulation study. The input of the simulation models in the proposed methodology is based on ISA-95 standardized data structure. The instantiated input data set can be stored both in MS Excel, XML files or an SQL database. Having the complete input a simulation model can be created automatically without simulation expertise.