Supporting Discrete Event Simulation with 3D Laser Scanning and Value Stream Mapping: Benefits and Drawbacks

Paper in proceeding, 2018

Discrete Event Simulation (DES) has been applied to analyze and understand production systems for many decades, however the models created may not accurately represent the spatial data of the system. 3D laser scanning can be utilized to capture and digitalize the spatial data of production systems, giving proper references for the simulation model. This paper evaluates the benefits and drawbacks of using a DES model supported with Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and 3D laser scanning to analyze a low volume production system. Results show benefits in several steps of a DES study, mainly at the cost of simulation speed.