Economic justification of Virtual Commissioning in automation industry

Virtual Commissioning (VC) is the latest trend in automation assembly. VC offers, among other benefits such as product quality improvement, promises a great reduction in the system ramp-up time, and a resulting shortening of the product's time to market. This paper presents an approach to economic justification of VC application by considering and evaluating its tangible and intangible costs and benefits through case studies and applying Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP). The results of this research are useful for justifying emulation efforts such as VC in almost any automation business which requires warehouses, manufacturing or production, assembly, distribution centers, or handling of mails, cargo, and baggage.