Factory Simulation Engineer

With the DELMIA 3DEXPERIENCE Factory Simulation Engineer (EFS) Role engineers can design factory layouts, and define & validate the behavior of a station, a line or a complete plant in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

They see their systems in 3D as they design them. They can assess and fine-tune the performance of production systems, conducting feasibility and performance studies. They can identify bottlenecks early in the planning process and maximize production rates with alternate routings. They can optimize resource positioning thanks to precise 3D simulation.

DELMIA Factory Simulation Engineer

Factory Simulation Engineer Benefits

Plant Layout Design

• Define and validate shop floor layouts in a realistic 3D environment
• Collaborative plant design and early discovery of layout problems
• Share them with other stakeholders for enriching and validating process plans
• Import large point clouds of existing facilities and validate layout of 3D models with a production environment.

AGV Flow Simulation

Provides AGV simulation for warehouse logistics or supplying products on a final assembly line. Autonomous, connected and intelligent, these vehicles help to optimize logistics performance by increasing productivity and reducing operating costs. Organized by resource pool, the AGV will detect a collision-free path and ensure a minimum stopping space to avoid collisions. Additional attributes will help to define route logics to optimize the flow.

EFS empowers an Industrial Engineer to address design and operational issues, including the following questions:

• What is the best path layout to minimize travel time?
• Where are the potential bottleneck areas?
• How many AGVs do you need to meet activity requirements?
• What are the best scheduled maintenance strategies?
• Which task assignment rules maximize vehicle utilization?
• What is the best idle vehicle deployment to minimize response time?
• Is there a possibility of deadlocks?
• Is there a possibility of collisions?

Material and resources flow design in a realistic 3D environment with or without planning data

Engineers can design factory layouts, as they define, simulate, and analyze multiple production scenarios, in a realistic 3D environment. If process planning data is not available, they can start from scratch, positioning resources and designing material flows. They can define production equipment, line behavior and material flow logic. If resource programming has been done, robot and NC machine programs as well as human tasks are natively integrated into the model and can be simulated.

Early recognition and elimination of trouble spots and bottlenecks

IEN gives engineers an early view of product flows that makes it simpler to make adjustments and optimize process performance with alternate product routings. Interactive what-if scenarios help identify potential bottlenecks. Results of the process flow analysis can be made available to all stakeholders across the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Intuitive tool to quickly define and analyze different material flow scenarios

EFS provides an intuitive UI to easily define the material directly on top of the 3D layout. Some detailed parameters allow users to fine-tune the behavior of each resource or worker. By running some multi-cycle simulations in the realistic 3D environment, the user is able to directly analyze through various KPIs and dashboards the global behavior of his station, line or even factory and detect any issue.

Simulate machine failures

EFS users can simulate the impact of machine failures. They can input mean time to failure either with a fixed schedule or by probability. They can associate a repair activity and time, and then decide if the machine should restart or continue past the interruption in mid-cycle.

DELMIA Factory Flow Example

Factory Simulation Engineer Highlights

Easy adoption by the user community

This 3D oriented solution with an intuitive UI to define the material flow facilitates the adoption by the users. With a few clicks directly selecting the corresponding 3D elements in the layout he can draft a full production line material flow. Then by clicking again in 3D on each step he specify some detailed parameters. Then with the play button he runs the simulation.

Modeling and simulation at multiple levels of detail

Working with multiple attributes, engineers can tweak a large range of values and run 3D simulations to arrive at an effective flow. They can assign a worker to a transfer point, for example, and adjust worker speed and transfer time to accord with the weight of the product. They can adjust conveyor speed to the timing requirements of a robot or an NC machine.

Expanded definition & simulation of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs)

• Route Groups (Push Mode)
• Request Groups (Pull mode)
• Parking Groups
• Claim Groups
• Define conveyors and buffers
• Define and simulate pallets, bins & movable racks
• Define walkways based on factory map
• Individual Resource KPIs
• Live Gantt to monitor the global behavior of the line

Speedy process evaluation

EFS enables rapid equipment feasibility and performance studies. Engineers can move quickly through evaluation of production rates and resource utilization with Key Performance Indicators (KPI) monitoring, analyzing and reporting.