Efficiency improvement of flexible manufacturing systems with production planning based on simulation of production capabilities of employees

Abstract

In addition to the spread of Industry 4.0 and various digitization solutions, the human factor continues to play a key role in the operation of production and logistics processes. Therefore, development of digital models and calculation algorithms that are able to take into account the production capabilities of the employees in an integrated way during the production planning and the determination of the production sequences becomes necessary. Due to the complexity of the task, simulation models are often applied. Performance of production scheduling systems enhanced with employee capabilities can be effectively evaluated with such models. Our paper presents a general simulation system model and a new heuristic algorithm to support production scheduling. The simulation based investigation proved that the proposed method improves the efficiency of the studied production system in terms of resource utilization.