Kashif Zia (Sohar University) presented the paper at the 12th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics taking place virtually from July 25 to 29.

Zia K., Farooq U., Ferscha A. (2021) A Hybrid Simulation Model for an Efficient and Flexible Shop Floor System. In: Wright J.L., Barber D., Scataglini S., Rajulu S.L. (eds) Advances in Simulation and Digital Human Modeling. AHFE 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 264. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79763-8_25, opens an external URL in a new window

Abstract
One of the goals of the future manufacturing systems is autonomic and self-organized shop floors. This requires flexible manufacturing units in terms of their availability and ability so that extremely personalized products, even of lot size equal to one, can be produced. In this paper, we propose a framework, which focuses on grouping cohesion of manufacturing units and efficient routing of products to resources. Towards this, we integrate an established cultural evolution model to achieve desirable flexibility of resources considering the requirements of the products that are being manufactured. A hybrid discrete simulation environment is implemented, in which cultural evolution among the resources is modeled using discrete-time, whereas, for routing, a simple queuing system is modeled using the discrete-event method.