Robust Engineering for the Design of Resilient Manufacturing Systems

As the industrial requirements change rapidly due to the drastic evolution of technology, the necessity of quickly investigating potential system alternatives towards a more efficient manufacturing system design arises more intensely than ever. Production system simulation has proven to be a powerful tool for designing and evaluating a manufacturing system due to its low cost, quick analysis, low risk and meaningful insight that it may provide, improving the understanding of the influence of each component. In this research work, the design and evaluation of a real manufacturing system using Discrete Event Simulation (DES), based on real data obtained from the copper industry is presented. The current production system is modelled, and the real production data are analyzed and connected. The impact identification of the individual parameters on the response of the system is accomplished towards the selection of the proper configurations for near-optimum outcome. Further to that, different simulation scenarios based on the Design of Experiments (DOE) are studied towards the optimization of the production, under predefined product analogies.