Evaluation of capacity expansion by means of fuzzy-DEVS

System capacity expansion is a strategic decision that firms have to face after the design of the system and during its running. In particular, the sector of hi-tech manufacturing is affected by unpredictable changes of part types and volume demand, which are difficult to formalize and estimate. In fact, it is difficult to forecast births and deaths of products, increasing and decreasing of volumes, and therefore to decide how and when to expand the existing system. Decision-makers have to combine the expected demand, the market trends and all the available forecasts on which the choice to increase or not the system is taken. The paper defines a new formalism that can be effectively used to model the behavior of systems that operate within uncertain environments. In particular, it is assumed that the system designer cannot have an exact and thorough knowledge of how market parameters will change during their life cycle. The application of the proposed formalism enables the system designer to browse through the different evolutions the system can follow, according to the different strategies that can be followed, in order to select the best one. In particular, an analysis of the results deriving from exhaustive simulations carried out using the proposed formalism can produce many significant parameters that can be effectively used to compare different design and configuration approaches.