Exploring reconfiguration alternatives in self-organising evolvable production systems through simulation

Simulation has played an important role along the years to predict systems' behaviour before their deployment. In the case of self-organising mechatronic systems simulation tools can help researchers and practitioners understanding the full potential of the solution as well as its underlying limitations. Self-organising mechatronic systems have passed a feasibility study and presented promising results. However they are rarely explored in industry in part due to the lack of methods to support their design and configuration and the difficulty to predict the systems' behaviour before their deployment. Given the cost and development time associated with building self-organising mechatronic systems this research problem has been left quite unattended. In this article we present a tool that enables the creation and simulation of Evolvable Production Systems and their self-organising behaviour. The generated operational results can posteriorly be used to analyse the suitability of different design and configuration alternatives for different product types and volumes.