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The short-lived nature of products requires production enterprises to plan new production systems in ever shorter intervals. The enterprises are thus prompted to improve their planning processes and in particular to shorten their planning times. Computer supported planning tools can be used to develop planning alternatives and to examine them, using simulation, with respect to their dynamic attributes. A substantial problem can be seen in the conception of a hybrid assembly system containing a similar amount of automated and manual stations. The procedure PAMELA was developed at the ifab-Institute of Human and Industrial Engineering at the University of Karlsruhe for the design of suitable planning solutions for hybrid assembly systems (Muller 2002; Zulch, Muller 2001a). This procedure is based on the description of work content and the dependencies of assembly operations as well as several layered precedence diagrams. Simulation is called upon for the assessment and choice of alternative planning solutions. The use of the procedure PAMELA will be demonstrated in this article using an application example.

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