SEAE-SES Enterprise Alternative Evaluator: Design and implementation of a manufacturing enterprise alternative evaluation tool

Abstract

This document presents a novel representation and evaluation framework for organizational structures. The SES Enterprise Alternative Evaluator (SEAE), while adhering to the broader focus of developing a design environment for manufacturing system configurations, will be used to design and evaluate a single product process. Enterprise representation, normally approached through the categorical qualitative and quantitative descriptive attributes of evaluation objectives, did not have a framework specifically focused on hierarchical enterprise design prior to this dissertation. The SES, in representing the manufacturing enterprise, includes alternative manufacturing system components within the design structure through entity specialization. SEAE enumeration produces the best set of these alternatives relative to the objectives during enterprise evaluation. The motivation for this research was two-fold. A primary consideration was to provide enterprise designers with a modular, flexible tool, incorporating current state-of-the-art modeling and simulation capabilities for use in hypothesis testing, development, and analysis. Enterprise modeling is presently devoid of a framework for simultaneously combining the strategic, tactical, and financial enterprise design considerations along the lines of common organization function hierarchical decompositions. The present approach is to provide a design structure, usually to combine prescriptive and descriptive methods, to achieve the representation. Preliminary results of this tool's use are presented for designing and evaluating Terrasun L. L. C.'s manufacturing system.