A mesoscopic approach to modeling and simulation of logistics processes

Abstract

Simulation models are important for planing, implementing and operating logistics systems since they can depict their dynamic system behavior. In the field of logistics, discrete-event models are widely used. Their creation and computation is often very time and labor consuming. For this reason, the paper presents a new mesoscopic modeling and simulation approach to quickly and effectively execute analysis and planning tasks related to production and logistics systems. Mesoscopic models represent logistics flow processes on an aggregated level through piecewise constant flow rates instead of modeling individual flow objects. The results are not obtained by counting individual objects but by using mathematical formulas to calculate the results as continuous quantities in every modeling time step. This leads to a fast model creation and computation. In terms of level of detail, mesoscopic simulation models fall between object based discrete-event simulation models and flow based continuous simulation models.