Patent ID: 7844420

Claim:
A manufacturing system performance analysis tool comprising: a computing platform including at least one user application program and a manufacturing system performance analysis tool software architecture; said manufacturing system performance analysis tool software architecture further comprising: a modeling isolation layer including an application program interface, internal object constructors, and an analysis module interface, said application program interface providing user access to manufacturing system modeling and analysis functions that respectively provide for modeling and analysis of the performance of a manufacturing system, and enabling user application program interaction in constructing user objects, said internal object constructors effective to generate internal objects corresponding to said user objects; a plurality of analysis modules for providing manufacturing system analyses, said analysis module interface effective to selectively bind internal objects to ones of said plurality of manufacturing system analysis modules; wherein said modeling isolation layer decouples said analysis modules from said at least one user application program; and whereby said manufacturing system performance analysis tool is made modular, library-based, and readily extensible.