Design and Evaluation of Selective and Adaptive Production Systems

Companies try to gain competitive advantages by creating customized products which meet requirements of customers and quality goals. To cope with these challenges internal production processes need to be more effective in order to produce better quality in shorter times at lower costs and act near to technological limits. This results in a very complex planning and coordination process.

Against this background the concept of Selective and Adaptive Production Systems (SAPS) provides an established approach of obtaining high precision assemblies from relatively low precision manufactured parts. This helps to lower production costs while still being able to provide high quality products. Since simulation has proved to be a useful support in the field of planning and control, the thesis presents an innovative simulation model that depicts the structure and function of SAPS and helps the user to estimate the efficiency of SAPS at an early stage of production planning.

The developed simulation model considers the dynamic aspects of SAPS such as subsystems or modules behavior and identifies the technical key parameters of SAPS that can be used for increasing the performance of the production systems. Furthermore, the concept considers the lean principles like production system elements and effecting quality strategies and incorporates more realistic circumstances in the simulation. The application of the developed concept and simulation model is demonstrated, using a case study from practice. This case study proves that challenges where high requirements are placed on the precision of final products can be mapped and solved by the application of the SAPS simulation model.