Hierarchical, object-oriented modeling and simulation as a tool for managing the manufacturing enterprise

The authors present an approach to the modeling a manufacturing enterprise as an atoms-to-enterprise hierarchical system of recursive, interacting, transformational units, which permits one to investigate and understand how events and decisions on one level of the hierarchy impact the entire enterprise both on that same level and up and down the hierarchy. This is not a hierarchy of management; it is a hierarchy of functional constituents, each with its own scope of interaction and unique contribution to the end products. This hierarchical systems approach permits local optimization of the functions associated with one recursive transformation cell, but encourages the more desirable goal of optimization of the enterprise system at the global level