Högskolan i Skövde

Removing bottlenecks that restrain the overall performance of a factory can give companies a competitive edge. Although in principle, it is possible to connect multiple detailed discrete-event simulation models to form a complete factory model, it could be too computationally expensive, especially if the connected models are used for simulation-based optimizations. Observing that computational speed of running a simulation model can be significantly reduced by aggregating multiple line-level models into an aggregated factory level, this paper investigates, with some loss of detail, if the identified bottleneck information from an aggregated factory model, in terms of which parameters to improve, would be useful and accurate enough when compared to the bottleneck information obtained with some detailed connected line-level models. The results from a real-world, multi-level industrial application study have demonstrated the feasibility of this approach, showing that the aggregation method can represent the underlying detailed line-level model for bottleneck analysis.

Reacting quickly to changing market demands and new variants by improving and adapting industrial systems is an important business advantage. Changes to systems are costly; especially when those systems are already in place. Resources invested should be targeted so that the results of the improvements are maximized. One method allowing this is the combination of discrete event simulation, aggregated models, multi-objective optimization, and data-mining shown in this article. A real-world optimization case study of an industrial problem is conducted resulting in lowering the storage levels, reducing lead time, and lowering batch sizes, showing the potential of optimizing on the factory level. Furthermore, a base for decision-support is presented, generating clusters from the optimization results. These clusters are then used as targets for a decision tree algorithm, creating rules for reaching different solutions for a decision-maker to choose from. Thereby allowing decisions to be driven by data, and not by intuition. 

Simulation-based optimisation enables companies to take decisions based on data, and allows prescriptive analysis of current and future production scenarios, creating a competitive edge. However, effectively visualising and extracting knowledge from the vast amounts of data generated by many-objective optimisation algorithms can be challenging. We present an open-source, web-based application in the R language to extract knowledge from data generated from simulation-based optimisation. For the tool to be useful for real-world industrial decision-making support, several decision makers gave their requirements for such a tool. This information was used to augment the tool to provide the desired features for decision support in the industry. The open-source tool is then used to extract knowledge from two industrial use cases. Furthermore, we discuss future work, including planned additions to the open-source tool and the exploration of automatic model generation.

Manufacturing is becoming increasingly complex as product life cycles shorten, and new disruptive technologies are introduced. The increased complexity in the manufacturing footprint also complicates industrial decision-making. Proposed improvements to alleviate bottlenecks do not guarantee effective problem resolution. Instead, improvement efforts can become misguided, targeting a bottleneck that affects a single production line rather than the entire site. An effective method for identifying production issues and predicting system performance is discrete-event simulation. When coupled with multi-objective optimization and multi-level modeling, production performance issues can be identified at both the site and workstation levels. However, optimization studies yield vast amounts of data, which can be challenging to extract useful knowledge from. To address this, we employ data-mining methods to assist decision-makers in extracting valuable insights from optimization data. This study presents an architecture for a decision support system that utilizes simulation-based optimization to continuously aid in industrial decision-making. Through a novel model generation method, simulation models are automatically generated and updated using logged data from the manufacturing shop floor and product lifecycle management systems. To reduce the computational complexity of the optimization, model simplification, varying replication numbers, surrogate modeling, and parallel computing in the cloud are also employed within this architecture. The results are presented to a decision-maker in an intelligent decision-support system, allowing for timely and relevant industrial decisions.