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If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this research is to focus on the solution of the resource sizing problem for production systems (PSs), defined as the specification of the number of each type of resources to be used in a production process for a given time period. Design/methodology/approach -The resource sizing problem is tackled by a simulation-expert-system-based approach, coupling an expert system (ES) with a simulation tool. Hence, a number of "simulation -ES optimization" cycles are realized until obtaining non-improvable levels of performance. The main performance measures considered in this work are related to the manufacturing orders due dates (DD). Findings -Through the approach proposed in this work, it is possible to size machines in order to optimize DD related performance measures for a PS belonging to a specific application domain. PSs of this domain are characterized by a functional layout and feature no labor constraints. In addition, machines belonging to a same department are considered to be identical. Originality/value -The developed approach allows studying the machine sizing problem realistically, through the use of stochastic simulation. Also, by coupling an ES to the simulation tool, it avoids the try and error aspect characterizing most simulation-based approaches. It hence features a well-structured reasoning mechanism for the search of the best solution.

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Manufacturing System (MS) sizing is a crucial task to complete in order to obtain the desired MS performance and efficiency. It involves selecting the required number of resources from each used type in a given planning horizon. In fact, different approaches coupling simulation/optimization tools have been developed to solve this issue and evaluate the MS performance. One of these approaches is the Simulation Expert System Approach (SESA). Unfortunately, the application domain of this approach is limited in sizing only the production resources (machines and labor) but neglects the material handling system (MHS) components. Moreover, omitting the transferring problem is not viable in the real world due to its importance in each shop floor. Thus, the aim of this paper is to describe the evolution of SESA, then, to check if the simulation optimization tools used in SESA are still relevant. This paper also investigates the importance of incorporating MHS in this approach and finally proposes some improvement opportunities for SESA including the tackling of the MHS fleet sizing problem. In fact, the wide literature review performed in this research indicates that SESA is still a pertinent approach but it must be improved. Therefore, it is expected that SESA improvement opportunities proposed in this work will greatly assist industrialists in enhancing the overall MS performance, providing a significant productivity increase and a minimization of the total production costs.