Automating the development of shipyard manufacturing models

Simulation results are often needed within a short time frame, while the development of simulation models can be time consuming. We develop a methodology to facilitate rapid generation of simulation models from an enterprise database. Data is communicated between Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software and Flexsim using a standard Microsoft Excel format. We have developed a custom Flexsim interface and software-specific model generator that creates a discrete event simulation model from the PLM input data. Preliminary results show that the methodology can reduce the cost of simulation model generation while simultaneously improving the accuracy of generated models. This work highlights the benefits of automatic model generation techniques, describes a shipbuilding implementation of the methodology, and provides direction for future work.