Assessment of the NIST Shop Data Model as a Neutral File Format

This paper evaluates the shop data model (SDM) being developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in terms of its viability as a neutral file format (NFF) for the discrete-event simulation (DES) of manufacturing systems. ProModel simulation software served as the test case for this evaluation. Observations are also provided regarding the challenges that simulation vendors might encounter when implementing the proposed NIST SDM. This paper shows that the NIST SDM doesn't pose any limitations which would prevent it from syntactically representing a manufacturing simulation model, however, it is not without certain challenges and difficulties. While only 28% of the ProModel data elements are currently supported by the SDM, future enhancements to the SDM should allow the information model to serve as a foundation upon which a common information model and NFF for the DES industry could be built