BISManufacturing was designed to facilitate the simulation of disassembly manufacturing operations without requiring the user to build a simulation model. These are operations that start out with a few major inputs and produce many different products. Typically there will be a number of processing steps and each of these steps will produce multiple products.

The major processing steps and intermediate storage locations are first captured in an IDEF0 process map in WorkFlow Modeler. This is then used to generate a basic simulation model and the details of this model are captured in a database. The user then enters all the details (like routing, pre-cursor, processing step and production time) of the final and intermediate products.

This information is then used to construct the detailed simulation model used to run the scenarios (which are also set up by the user and stored in the database). Scenario information includes intial conditions such as stocks and the status of the processing steps as well as a demand schedule.

The prototype was developed for a large steel rolling/coating/painting plant with a simplified range of more than 150 products. It implemented pull-scheduling based on known order quantities for final products. It also handled different product grades, including material requiring a rework step; and events like planned shutdowns.