Simulation studies for determining the capacity of a new production facility

This paper describes the use of discrete simulation to determine the capacities and production rates of a new two-stage production facility. Due to lack of experience, it is necessary to determine the capacity of each individual machine in the production process, as well as the capacity of each production stage. The production rate of the entire facility is established on the basis of individual capacities. The analysis of the production system shows that bottlenecks are highly dependent on the actual production mix. The production limitations of each stage are therefore separately determined and they are further used as restrictions in the shoploading procedure. In addition, a heuristic solution procedure for establishing a production program by taking all simulated capacity restrictions into account is presented.