Incorporation of human factors into a Discrete Event Simulation Model for human centred assembly performance evaluation

Abstract

Discrete Event Simulation (DES) tool is commonly used for the design, analysis, and evaluation of manufacturing systems. Human centred assembly systems offer better system flexibility and responsiveness due to inherent human intelligence and problem-solving abilities; human can deal with product variations and production volumes; and can always adapt themselves to multiple tasks after learning process. Nevertheless, human performance can be unpredictable, and may alter over time due to varying psychological and physiological states, these are often overlooked by researchers when designing, implementing, or evaluating a manufacturing system. In this paper a user-friendly integrated DES method was proposed to enable manufacturing system designers to investigate overall performance of human centred system considering effects of selected human factors. the method can permit manufacturing system designers to evaluate overall manufacturing system performance with considerations of parameters of human factors at early design stage. A case study was carried out using integrated approach; simulation results demonstrate the applicability of this approach.