Increase of Robustness on Pre-optimized Production Plans Through Simulation-based Analysis and Evaluation

We propose the use of the material flow simulation to evaluate the robustness of a production plan, which was created and optimized with no respect to unforeseen derivations. Since the necessary probabilities for machine failures and similar operational events on the floor can easily be integrated in the simulation model, in order to analyze, how initial plan performs in these situations. The influence of unforeseen events in daily production cannot be modeled within mathematical optimization without consuming large amounts of computation time. We show a possible way to use simulation to evaluate and enhance a production plan. We illustrate the developed process using a real-world use-case of medium complexity and can show, that simulation is able to evaluate the robustness of a given pro-optimizes production plan.