Advanced tutorial - simulation-based scheduling and control

This paper presents a simulation control system developed by the Texas A&M Computer Aided Manufacturing Laboratory (TAMCAM). This control system is a research tool that TAMCAM uses to explore the advantages and disadvantages of on-line simulation for process control. The simulation control system is developed directly from information about the shop floor stored in a relational database. Processing times and fallout rates are also estimated directly from external data sources. The system is implemented in Arena, Microsoft Access, and Microsoft Visual C++. The advanced tutorial will demonstrate the software tools described in this paper.