Integrating Human Factor Decision Components into A DES Model

Abstract

Discrete event simulation (DES) is usually used for design, analysis and evaluation of a manufacturing system. For human-centered manufacturing systems, which employ human workers as one of main sources for production, systems designers often ignore human effects in development and evaluation of human-centered manufacturing systems using DES methods. This is partially because of complexity in human behaviours and a lack of adequate functionalities of the existing DES tools that allow incorporation of human factors into considerations, which may have an impact on the system performance. These missing parameters of human performance in a manufacturing system need to be addressed ideally at the early design stage, and thus there is a desire for creating a methodology, which enables system designers incorporating human factors (parameters) into DES tools. This paper presents a framework in development of an integrated DES platform, which allows an input of the relevant human related parameters into a DES model providing a more comprehensive simulation output for decision-makings on system performance.