Specialized Simulation Models for Production Planning
W. J. Davis*
University of Illinois

A new object-oriented simulation approach is being developed for the production planning problem. The approach will permit the product structure diagram and specialized policies for managing the inventory for each product to be considered. Finally, the simulation approach defines a generalized queue for all staged and dispatched orders that can be interfaced to any intelligent control algorithm for managing the production. Eventually, the modeling will be expanded to consider the purchasing of materials from external vendors, material and capacity requirements planning, and real-time production scheduling.