Simulation of production lines in the education of engineers: how to choose the right software?

The article discusses the problems of modeling and simulation in the design of production lines, mainly from an educator’s perspective. Nowadays, there is a wide range of computer programs that can be used to design production lines and to simulate various aspects of their operation. However, the programs being available vary considerably as to their functionality, the approach to production system design, and the visualization tools. Therefore we demonstrate and evaluate in this paper four simulation programs, focusing on the easiness of system design, area of the possible applications in education of engineers, and the limitations imposed by versions dedicated for students. We evaluate three of programs for digital factory simulation on a common, simple assembly task, then demonstrate that these programs may be also used for more specialized simulations in various areas of production, and compare with a specialized program for simulation of robotised production lines and work cells