Concept and Demonstration of a Generic Simulation to Identify Production Bottlenecks

Bottlenecks are generally recognized as resources or utilities that limit the performance of a production system. A limitation of performance by bottlenecks leads to various impacts on the production system. If the capacity of a process does not meet the demand of the products, delivery dates are missed, additional orders cannot be accepted, and the enterprise may lose customers. This paper presents a concept and a demonstration of a generic simulation in AnyLogicⒸ to identify bottlenecks in the production. The goal of the simulation is to increase the performance of the production system to meet the delivery dates of customer orders. Through the generic structure of the simulation model, this production floor is automatically built in the simulation, making it possible to adapt the simulation for any job-shop-organized production floor. The presented concept contains descriptions of the goals and functions of the simulation, interfaces for data transfer to and from the simulation, the generic structure of the simulation, and the indicators to evaluate production plans. The concept is demonstrated based on real production data from a medium-size enterprise in northwest Germany.