Development of an intelligent manufacturing management simulation model: An application to the precast concrete industry

The aim of this ongoing research is to improve the performance of the precast concrete products manufacturing system through developing and testing an intelligent manufacturing management system. The objective is to develop and test an advanced evolutionary meta-heuristic approach embedded in simulation models applied in the precast concrete products manufacturing system. IDEF0, as a visual modelling tool is used to capture and understand the hierarchal relationships in the production processes. Precast product data has been collected with the assistance of an industrial partner. Discrete Event Simulation Methodology is adopted to convert the developed static modelling version of IDEF0 into a dynamic one. ARENA software is used to develop the production processes simulation model. The intelligent engine will be developed as a later stage beyond this research in order to enrich the simulation technique with more knowledge for a better searching. Precast concrete manhole has been chosen as a case study. Manhole Manufacturing Simulation System (MMSS) is developed as a test bed for the proposed intelligent engine. Many scenarios are run to determine the impact of different decision variables on main production process parameters.