An object-oriented approach to manufacturing systems modeling

This paper describes a methodology to support the design process of complex systems. The main challenge in modern industrial applications is the sheer volume of data involved in the design process. While using high-level abstraction is necessary to manage this data and analyze the system "as a whole", designers need also to retain all the low-level information of the system, in order to be able to perform optimizations and modifications at later times. The solution proposed here is to use a hierarchy of models that describe the system at different levels of abstraction, and are arranged in such a way that is possible to easily "map" each level onto the others. The topmost layer of the system description is expressed in System Modeling Language (SysML), a general-purpose modeling language based on UML.