Object-oriented modeling and simulation of flexible manufacturing systems: a rule-based procedure

Simulation by a software model, is one of the most frequently used techniques for the analysis and design of manufacturing systems. In the software engineering research area, the object-oriented approach has fully demonstrated to be an effective technique with respect to the design and implementation phases of complex software projects. Even if object-oriented programming has proven to be a powerful technique, a systematic design method should also be used in order to implement reliable software, in particular in the development of simulation models. This paper presents a new procedure to develop flexible manufacturing system (FMS) simulation models, based on the UML analysis/design tools and on the ARENA® simulation language. The two main features of the proposed procedure are the definition of a systematic conceptual procedure to design FMS simulation models and of a set of rules for the conceptual model translation in a simulation language. The goal is to improve the software development efficiency through a rule-based approach and to add some of the fundamental object-oriented features to the ARENA® simulation environment.