Simulating a production system as an agent-based model: a case study of a gear reducer factory

The management of production system is one of the important topics under the environment of industry 4.0. Simulation model of production system can provide dynamic information to evaluate system performance. In this paper, a production system model based on discrete event simulation and agent-based simulation is proposed. Discrete event simulation describes the event-oriented simulation clock advance and process flow charts of production system. Agent-based simulation provides a distributed control structure to reduce the complexity of the production system. Then we study on a factory case producing gear reducers. In the AnyLogic software, the factory layout is configured and the process flows of producing parts are arranged. Also, agent-based model of machine agent and workshop agents is proposed to monitor the states. Finally, the simulation model dynamically reflects the operation of the production system.