Enterprise simulation: structure and control loops

International competitive pressures and increasingly complex regulations leave little room for decision errors in manufacturing enterprises. The general availability of powerful computers can be the foundation of a new generation of decision support systems based on concepts from general systems and control theory. We report on our attempt to develop an enterprise simulation technology for decision support and long term operations optimisation. We defined the comprehensive quality function as a global cost function for enterprise optimisation. To implement such an optimisation in practice requires an enterprise model. We look at possible ways to identify, automatically, the true hierarchical structure of an enterprise and the control loops in operation. For our modelling we use data from a real enterprise.<>