In the multi-variety and small-quantity manufacturing environment, changeover operation occurs frequently, and cooperative changeover method is often used as a way to shorten the changeover time and balance the workload. However, more workers and tasks will be affected by cooperative changeover. As such, the effectiveness of the cooperative changeover is dependent on other factors, such as the scope of cooperation and the proportion of newly introduced products. For this reason, this paper proposes a hybrid modeling method to support the simulation study of the production team's cooperative changeover strategies under various environments. Firstly, a hybrid simulation modeling method consisting of multi-agent systems and discrete events is introduced. Secondly, according to the scope of cooperation, this paper puts forward four kinds of cooperative changeover strategies. This paper also describes the cooperative line-changing behavior of operators. Finally, based on the changeover strategies, the proposed simulation method is applied to a production cell. Four production scenarios are considered according to the proportion of newly introduced part. The performance of various cooperative strategies in different production scenarios is simulated, and the statistical test results show that the optimal or satisfactory strategy can be determined in each production scenario. Additionally, the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed modeling method are verified.
A conceptual activity cycle-based simulation modeling method
