Rapid Modeling Architecture for Lightweight Simulator to Accelerate and Improve Decision Making for Industrial Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Rapid Modeling Architecture for lightweight industrial simulators that significantly reduces modeling time, enabling faster and more effective decision-making in industrial system design.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel RMA approach for creating lightweight simulators that maintain essential details while drastically reducing modeling time.

Findings

Achieved 78.3% reduction in modeling time compared to conventional simulators.

Successfully applied the RMA-based simulator to actual factory layout design.

Demonstrated improved decision-making efficiency in industrial system planning.

Abstract

Designing industrial systems, such as building, improving, and automating distribution centers and manufacturing plants, involves critical decision-making with limited information in the early phases. The lack of information leads to less accurate designs of the systems, which are often difficult to resolve later. It is effective to use simulators to model the designed system and find out the issues early. However, the modeling time required by conventional simulators is too long to allow for rapid model creation to meet decision-making demands. In this paper, we propose a Rapid Modeling Architecture (RMA) for a lightweight industrial simulator that mitigates the modeling burden while maintaining the essential details in order to accelerate and improve decision-making. We have prototyped a simulator based on the RMA and applied it to the actual factory layout design problem. We also compared the modeling time of our simulator to that of an existing simulator, and as a result, our simulator achieved a 78.3% reduction in modeling time compared to conventional simulators.