NIST Releases New Version of SimPROCESD Software for Discrete-event Manufacturing Simulation

NIST has released its latest software version of SimPROCESD v0.3.0, or Simulated-Production Resource for Operations and Conditions Evaluation to Support Decision-Making. SimPROCESD is used to model discrete manufacturing systems such as the production and assembly of finished products like vehicles, consumer electronics, and consumer goods. SimPROCESD is free, available for download, and has instructions for getting started.

NIST developed SimPROCESD to help users rapidly evaluate alternative manufacturing configurations, production programs, and maintenance policies. Within a manufacturing system, SimPROCESD can simulate: 

• Parts to represent the goods being produced.
• Sources for introducing parts to the system.
• Sinks for receiving and storing parts that exit the manufacturing stream.
• PartFlowControllers, which are objects that represent downstream routing of received parts.
• PartHandlers, which extend PartFlowController’s abilities by retaining parts from upstream for a specific time period before passing them downstream.
• Buffers, a specific type of PartHandler that passes down stored parts when possible and has an optional minimum storage time.
• PartProcessors, which extend PartHandler’s abilities by processing received parts, and allowing to be shutdown for maintenance work.
• Probes & Sensors, including the ability to take periodic or on-demand readings and record the simulated data, which is accessible during and after the simulation.
• Maintainers, used to conduct maintenance on PartProcessor machines according to user-specified policies.

The latest SimPROCESD is an improvement over the 2023 release and now enables users to:

• Model groups of device objects that can be reused in multiple instances of a multi-stage manufacturing flow (also known as reentrant flows).
• Model limited resource designation & tracking with the new ResourceManager object.
• Have more flexibility in customizing manufacturing objects with the newly restructured base device types: PartProcessor, PartHandler, and PartFlowController.
• Simulate model iterations while utilizing multiple CPU cores (max of 1/iteration).

In addition to these new improvements, the latest SimPROCESD release includes new examples for implementing reentrant flows, shared resource management, and using multiple CPU cores to rerun simulations.

Feel free to contact Mehdi Dadfarnia (mehdi.dadfarnia [at] nist.gov (mehdi[dot]dadfarnia[at]nist[dot]gov)) or Serghei Drozdov (serghei.drozdov [at] nist.gov (serghei[dot]drozdov[at]nist[dot]gov)) with any questions regarding SimPROCESD.