A Basic Study on a Highly Distributed Simulation of Manufacturing Systems Under the Ubiquitous Environment

This study reports a new simulation paradigm devised to simulate manufacturing systems in its real operational stage. The objective manufacturing system is supposed to be under ubiquitous environment; in other words, all machines and equipments constituting a real manufacturing system are all equipped with intelligent devices and are connected to an information network. In the framework of the proposed simulation method, the simulation model is not built on one computer as is done in the conventional simulation, but is built on the network by integrating the intelligent devices. Each devise with properly embedded simulation functions plays as a simulation agent representing a resource or an entity in the conventional simulation model. This paper discusses the simulation functions required to each device to form a discrete event simulation system. The time management of the simulation and the event processes in the new simulation paradigm are described.