Simulation of workers in manufacturing systems

Besides the logistic system, the working structures in a company become increasingly important. With the introduction of flexible working structures, the role of workers in a simulation has to be redefined. It is essential to model workers in varying levels of detail. These levels have to match the levels of detail in the simulation of material flow. A specification was developed that summarizes the requirements to accomplish this. While being independent of the actual tool used, it provides assistance to the modeler when creating a simulation of workers. For each worker, additional attributes like creation of value, mental stress or physical strain are collected and evaluated. To describe the workers' disposition a central control instance is used. A prototypical implementation is demonstrated by means of examples