No abstract

Focusing on process constraints (or bottlenecks) is how companies are improving productivity, decreasing response times. However, a bottleneck is not easily detectable, especially when conventional bottleneck methods are used. This work presents a method, based on simulation, to help the selection of the bottleneck detection method to be applied to a given situation. The methodology extends previous works on the subject, mainly those by Roser, Nakano and Tanaka (2002) and Roser, Nakano and Tanaka (2003). The proposed method was successfully applied to a real bottling process.

There are several techniques for estimating cost and time for software development. These are known in software engineering as "software metrics." LOC (lines of code), COCOMO (COnstructive COst Model), and FPA (Function Point Analysis) are examples of such techniques. Although Discrete Event Simulation Modeling (DESM) has some differences from classical software development, it is possible to draw a parallel between these techniques and DESM. This article reviews some of the metrics from software engineering, and, based on those, proposes a metric for estimating time for the implementation of a simulation model using one specific simulation software. The results obtained for 22 real simulation projects showed that the proposed technique can estimate the time for software development with acceptable accuracy (average error of 6% and maximum absolute error of 38%) for models that have less that 200 simulation objects.