AbstractsEngineering

Simulation is one of the most important decision support tools that has been present during decades in the manufacturing industry. Discrete Event Simulation (DES) experiments analysis is an important engineering activity for efficient production. In order to improve this efficiency, many companies must develop a supporting framework, between engineers and the process information. Within DES it is also important the model provenance information because it validates the credibility of the model to be reused. Therefore, nowadays there is a great interest in the simulation community based on the reusability of the simulation models. The engineers at Volvo Cars Corporation (VCC) who work with DES technology, request and deliver a high number of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). As a consequence it is difficult to present the simulation results in a standardized way. This thesis has investigated a way to reduce and standardize this time consuming process. Thus, by the study of what information and data must be documented and how it must be presented, the main goal of this thesis was to improve the efficiency of a company, when a DES project is being developed. A survey based on VCC simulation projects, was undertaken with the aim to find the output data and the information that must be included in a standardized report. First, the information of the projects was categorized in three main groups: general information, input data and output data. Within these groups, the provenance metadata which allows the reuse of the DES project, was identified. Then, after the analysis of 23 reports from DES projects, most frequent scenarios and their related output data were identified. All the findings were used for the implementation of a standardized and automated data-handling system which simplify the project documentation task to the engineers. This data-handling system exports the key output data from the simulation software to the report designed. Validation interviews show a strong acceptance among the engineers at VCC. Finally, in order to properly keep in track with all the provenance information when a DES project is being performed, a management method was proposed as well.