Plant Simulation
Plant Simulation is a computer application developed by Siemens Digital Industries Software for modeling, simulating, analyzing, visualizing and optimizing production systems and processes, the flow of materials and logistic operations. Using Tecnomatix Plant Simulation, users can optimize material flow, resource utilization and logistics for all levels of plant planning from global production facilities, through local plants, to specific lines. Within the "Plant Design und Optimization Solution" the software portfolio, to which Plant Simulation belongs, is — together with the products of the Digital Factory and of Digital Manufacturing — part of the Product Lifecycle Management Software (PLM). The application allows  comparing complex production alternatives, including the immanent process logic, by means of computer simulations. Plant Simulation is used by individual production planners as well as by multi-national enterprises, primarily to strategically plan layout, control logic and dimensions of large, complex production investments. It is one of the major products that dominate that market space. Product description. Plant Simulation is a Material flow simulation Software (Discrete Event Simulation; DES Software). Using simulation, complex and dynamic enterprise workflows are evaluated to arrive at mathematically safeguarded entrepreneurial decisions. The Computer model allows the user to execute experiments and to run through 'what  if scenarios' without either having to experiment with the real production environment or, when applied within the planning phase, long before the real system exists. In general the Material flow analysis is used when discrete production processes are running. These processes are characterized by non-steady material flows, which means that the part is either there or not there, the shift takes place or does not take place, the machine works without errors or reports a failure. These processes resist simple mathematical descriptions and derivations due to numerous dependencies. Before powerful computers were available, most problems of material flow simulation  have been solved by means of queuing theory and operations research methods. In most cases the solutions resulting from these calculations were hard to understand and were marked by a large number of boundary conditions and restrictions which were hard to abide by in reality. Languages. Plant Simulation is available in English, German, Japanese, Hungarian, Russian and Chinese. The user can create individual Dialog boxes using double-byte characters and offering individual parameterizations. The user can switch between the available languages. Scope of application. Calculation of enterprise characteristics. Goal: Visualization. Plant Simulation can display production sequences in 2D and in  3D. The 3D display is especially helpful as a sales tool or for in-house communication of planned measures. In addition it allows to present the entire system concept within a virtual, interactive, immersive environment to non-simulation experts. The 3D engine is based on the industry standard JT format. CAD applications such as NX, Solid Edge can export models in this format. The 3D data files can be imported in the JT format '.jt' by using Drag-and-drop. Used in. Plant Simulation is used in most industries. Especially in the Lately material flow simulation gains growing importance through  the increasing use for considering the sustainability of industrial production processes. Here the characteristics of sustainable manufacturing are simulated and analyzed beforehand and then integrated into the investment decision process. Plant Simulation is also used for research and development purposes at a great number of universities and universities of applied science.