Hybrid Decision Support and Justification Methods for Production System Selection

This article presents different decision support and justification method principles for production system selection and development. The focus is on analytic approaches, discrete event simulation, queue theories and linear programming. Other approaches, both strategic and economic, are simply listed but are nonetheless of major importance. The benefits of discrete event simulation are discussed, along with reasons for not using it. Analytic methods, queue theories, linear programming, i.e. optimisation, are useful and can be used before or parallel to simulation modelling. The use of different methods is compared and a combination of different methods, i.e. hybrid methods, is discussed. The author proposes the use of hybrid methods and different types of modelling and simulation in production system concept creation and selection. The article is based on the author's experience of assembly system design and on a literature study.