THE ROLE OF SIMULATION IN TRACKING MOBILE ASSETS USING AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION SYSTEMS

A major aerospace company operates large factories that involve thousands of component parts, subassemblies, major sub-systems, tools, fixtures, and material handling equipments to assemble commercial airplanes every day. They are considered mobile assets on the plant floor. These mobile assets are handled, moved and delivered in a coordinated, choreographed manner in order to sustain a steady and efficient operation. When any of these mobile assets are misplaced and lost on the vast assembly plant floor, mechanics and expeditors spend many hours walking around the plant floor looking for them. These missing assets have incurred human time and efforts, caused lost productivity, and have a huge impact on production costs and schedule. RFID technology and other smart devices are being considered to track mobile assets, not only to iden-tify their whereabouts, but to monitor and manage their usage and inventory status. This paper describes how modeling and simulation technology and the Core manufacturing Simulation data (CMSD) specification are used to help assess the viability and business case justification of using RFID technology to track mobile assets on the plant floor. It also briefly describes continuing efforts and future tasks to use the CMSD specification in the case study. Keywords: interoperability, information model, interface standards, manufacturing simulatio