Enterprise simulation: a hybrid system approach

TLDR

Manufacturing enterprise decisions span business, design, engineering, and production, and while many physical and software simulation techniques evaluate specific decisions, discrete‑event models alone are insufficient to capture enterprise‑level impacts, so a hybrid approach aligns with the trend toward integrated systems. The study aims to assess how production decisions affect enterprise‑level performance by integrating discrete‑event simulation with system dynamics in a hybrid model. The hybrid model combines discrete‑event simulation of production processes with system dynamics of enterprise‑level variables to evaluate performance. The hybrid approach demonstrates potential benefits when applied to a semiconductor enterprise example.

Abstract

Manufacturing enterprise decisions can be classified into four groups: business decisions, design decisions, engineering decisions, and production decisions. Numerous physical and software simulation techniques have been used to evaluate specific decisions by predicting their impact on either system performance or product performance. In this paper, we focus on the impact of production decisions, evaluated using discrete-event-simulation models, on enterprise-level performance measures. We argue that these discrete-event models alone are not enough to capture this impact. To address this problem, we propose integrating discrete-event simulation models with system dynamics models in a hybrid approach to the simulation of the entire enterprise system. This hybrid approach is conceptually consistent with current business trend toward integrated systems. We show the potentials for using this approach through an example of a semiconductor enterprise.