Near-term distributed simulation of apparel manufacturing

The design and implementation of a near-term simulator for apparel manufacturing are described. The primary purpose of a simulator is to provide management with a tool for production planning. In order to run as accurate a simulation as possible, data describing the status of the apparel plant are continually collected by a real-time shop-floor control system. These data are then used as input to the simulator. In order to increase the speed of the simulator and reduce the response time, the simulator is implemented on a multiprocessor system consisting of 17 T-800 Inmos Transputers with a Compaq Deskpro 386/25 serving as the front-end processor. A user enters a plan for the next production period and receives back more than 70 different measures of performance of shop-floor operations. The user may iterate this process, making modifications to the plan, until the simulated shop-floor performance is satisfactory. The final result is a detailed plan for the next production period