An HLA-based distributed simulation for networked manufacturing systems analysis

Manufacturing systems can be thought as production networks nodes whose relations have a strong impact on design and analysis of each system. Commercial simulators are already adopted to analyse complex networked systems, but the development of a monolithic model can be too complex or infeasible when a detailed description of the nodes is not available outside the 'owner' of the node. Then the problem can be decomposed modelling complex systems with various simulators that interoperate in a synchronized manner. Herein, the integration of simulators is addressed by taking as a reference the High Level Architecture (HLA). This paper proposes modifications to Commercial-off-the-shelf Simulation Package Interoperability Product Development Group protocols and to use patterns of how HLA can be effectively adopted to support Commercial Simulation Package interoperability: a new solution for the synchronous entity passing problem and modifications to the Entity Transfer Specification are presented. The resulting infrastructure is validated and tested over an industrial case. Journal of Simulation (2012) 6, 237-252. doi:10.1057/jos.2012.6; published online 15 June 2012