ESM 2004, 18th European Simulation Multiconference
June 13th-16th, 2004
Magdeburg, Germany






  Keynote Speaker

ESM2004 will feature a keynote presentation given by Dr. Stefan Greiner of the Research Division of DaimlerChrysler AG.

Using Simulation to Predict Quality and Cost in the Automotive Industry.

Simulation in industry has reached a very high popularity. Especially in the automotive industry, simulation is used very heavily when developing new vehicle concepts. Especially in the area of crash tests, simulation plays a major role. Typically, continuous simulation is used for these types of applications.

On the other hand, discrete simulation is becoming more and more popular, because many problems can be mapped to discrete models. Consider, for example, the question of how many breakdowns for a fleet of vehicles can be expected during their warranty/courtesy period. In this case, we have a continuous time frame and discrete events, namely the breakdown of a vehicle. Before we can analyze a system, we have to set up a model for this system/scenario. Therefore, we need a modeling paradigm that is both easy to understand and well suited for numerical analysis.

At DaimlerChrysler, the modeling paradigm used is Stochastic Petri Nets, which we have extended in order to meet our specific modeling needs. These extensions result in models that no longer have the Markovian property, and therefore a closed system solution was not longer easily computable. On the other hand, discrete system simulation was perfectly suited to solve these types of extended Petri Net models. Based on different research activities at DaimlerChrysler, the Petri Net modeling and analysis tool Expect was developed.

During the talk, different modeling and analysis examples are discussed and demonstrated. These examples range from cost analyses to process analyses. Together with numerical examples, an introduction to the analysis tool Expect is provided.