Simulating the furniture industry

The furniture industry is operating on tighter margins and ever increasing competition. No longer are the days when one could develop a product and market it for years, if not decades. With more competition and ever changing consumer demands, manufacturers are frequently realizing the necessity to reengineer their facility to satisfy the needs of many product groups and styles. Designing facilities that recognize the need for flexibility to reduce costs requires a clear understanding of the interdependent relationships naturally occurring in complex cellular manufacturing environments. However, engineers are often left to their own inherent instincts during the design phase of a project without an analytical tool to help them assess if their assumptions are correct or not. One of the best tools available to provide correct evaluations of system interdependencies is discrete event simulation. With the use of simulation, manufacturers are able to quickly and accurately model future proposed modifications to their facilities without making costly guesses. Furthermore, if modeled correctly, the simulation model built to assess the significance of a proposed layout change can be evolved into an operational planning tool that can be utilized on a continued basis to evaluate issues such as scheduling sequences or batch sizes