The Role of Simulation in Strategic Manufacturing

Simulation technology holds tremendous promise for reducing costs, improving quality, and shortening the time-to-market for manufactured goods. Unfortunately, this technology still remains largely underutilized by industry today. This paper suggests benefits to industry resulting from the widespread, pervasive implementation of manufacturing simulation technology. Potential simulation impact areas are closely intertwined with strategic manufacturing. Yet, a number of factors currently inhibit the deployment of simulation technology in industry today. The development of new simulation interface standards could help increase the deployment of simulation technology. Interface standards could improve the accessibility of this technology by helping to reduce the expenses associated with acquisition and deployment, minimize model development time and costs, and provide new types of simulation functionality that are not available today.