Which tools to use in order to study manufacturing systems: spreadsheets or modelling and simulation techniques?

Compares two categories of tools: spreadsheets and simulation analysis techniques, as a means to study and improve manufacturing systems. The author shows that despite the popularity of spreadsheets, they are clearly insufficient to model the design and performance of manufacturing systems because of their static approach. Then the author presents an example of a manufacturing system: a high speed packaging line, and discusses the issues that one can try to address with simulation analysis.