Manufacturing systems modelling

The average economic life of manufacturing systems will reduce as product lifetimes reduce, unless the next generation of these systems is sufficiently flexible to realise the customised manufacture and assembly of multiple product types. To achieve this, there is the need for a full life cycle engineering of 'recomposable' production systems comprising processes and their associated resources. In reality, for any process to be sustainable, 'value' must be added along a process path at a reduced cost such that the sale of the process output will generate profit. In this book, an integrated multi-product dynamic cost and value stream modelling methodology which rests on well experimented techniques in the domains of process mapping, enterprise modelling, system dynamics and discrete event simulation modelling, have been applied to help design, analyse, estimate cost and values, and improve processes required for the realisation of multiple products in Manufacturing Enterprises. Results derived from the integrated methodology have been compared with the lean-based value stream mapping technique which offers limited solutions in the design of complex manufacturing systems.