Knowledge-Based Planning and Evaluation of Production Systems

Uncertainties as well as a variety of company internal and external factors influence the development of production systems. Adequate methods and tools are necessary for the planning processes. This paper presents a new concept for complete planning and multi-criteria evaluating of production systems inclusive a first software based realization and an exemplary planning application. Identified enablers are used to reduce planning time, to diminish planning costs and to increase the planning securing. The concept can be seen as a complementary tool for planning production systems. The concept is characterized by following points: application of a knowledge storage including their assessment, bottom-up planning of variants, planning securing via employing an integrated stochastic simulation model for the consideration of uncertainties, ramp-up and series-specific effects and automating routine tasks.