A concurrent engineering system to integrate a production simulation and CAD system for FTL layout design

In this paper, we propose a Concurrent Engineering System (CES) to find a Flexible Transfer Line (FTL) layout design. CES integrates a Production Simulation (PS) module and a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) module. CES uses a PS module to determine the buffer size in front of the bay of each machine in the FTL and initialises a CAD module to draw the FTL layout. A PS module consists of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) and a discrete simulator. A CAD module has two submodules: a calculation and optimisation submodule and a drawing submodule. CES modules have been integrated into a single framework, in accordance with the practice of Concurrent Engineering (CE), to find the FTL buffer size and efficient layout design for FTL simultaneously. CE involves the cooperation of these activities. It is expected that the developed CES can improve production engineers' decision on the buffer size and determine an efficient FTL layout design. We applied an original developed CES to design some examples of FTLs. After a number of operations based on CES, the FTL layout could be drawn. As a result, it could be ascertained that the proposed CES is useful.