Object-oriented inventories for simulations of manufacturing processes

It is shown that an object-oriented approach to inventories makes the simulation of manufacturing processes much simpler and easier to maintain. A complete set of functionalities for inventory objects, along with their hierarchical class structure and the attributes (slots) ass,ociated with each class is presented. It is not claimed that these functionalities are mature, but they appear to be quite adequate for present and future modeling of manufacturing processes. The hope is to transfer, more or less intact, everything developed above the instance level to other projects. An implementation using the KEE expert shell system has been developed, and the resulting machinery is being applied to Rocky Flats Plant pyrochemical operations