Material flow data representation and integration based on STEP

A fundamental requirement for executing Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is incorporating a data structure that represents process, product and resource information, their interrelations. Further, the capability of integrating this data structure with other types of information such as geometry, e.g. for sizes of products or distances of transports, is of vital interest. Manufacturing information is normally not integrated but is heterogeneous and stored in different Computer Aided Design (CAD), and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) applications in the factory plant. Therefore it is important to create an information sharing repository that is based on a standardized and system neutral format to enable interoperability. Availability of relevant information would considerably cut the time of building the DES models, prevent mistakes in data entry and facilitate the reconfiguration analysis. This paper aims to describe how to represent the main required operational data of a manufacturing system for DES by using ISO 10303 Application Protocol 214 (STEP AP214) in order to fulfill the mentioned characteristics of data and information. Stochastic properties of manufacturing resource and corresponding processes such as measured cycle time and disturbances information are represented using application module 1274 (ISO 103031274) that defines a particular schema for probability distribution representation. A test implementation of the mentioned data including a graphical user interface has been carried out to show the feasibility of the research approach.