1988 Volume 21 Issue 5 Pages 482-489
The increasing variety of variants in products and/or raw materials in a multiproduct batch process causes frequent alterations of the system configuration and the operational policies. Therefore, the simulation system for batch processes must be flexible enough to deal easily with the alterations. This paper presents a rule-based simulation system for discrete event systems, e.g. batch processes, which has the capability to examining the validity of a simulation model. The model we employ is composed of system state and events. The basic unit for representing the system state is the frame and the behavioral description of the event is provided by the if-then rule. To prevent the model from being incomplete, the simulation system clarifies the causal relationship between rules and frames and detects the rules which are never executed or which have possibilities of conflict. The relationship is also utilized for executing efficient simulation. The model employed deals easily with rapid alterations of the simulated system because it takes advantage of the modularity of a rule.
