Simulation Program Generators (SPGs) developed using object-oriented environments may be designed to have a number of capabilities not available in traditional SPGs.One such capability is the description of an object's behavior from scratch without any programming when such behavior does not exist in the knowledgebase of the SPG.SmarterSim is an SPG that is currently being developed to provide the user a number of objectoriented tools including libraries of elemental operations, actions/requests, states, and rules and a number of function block templates to create new behavior using the existing primitive elements.The behavior of objects in a robotic manufacturing cell is described using SmarterSim.Like its predecessor SmartSim, SmarterSim supports a hierarchical, modular modeling for building of subsystems (coupled models) from model objects (atomic models) using subsystem management features. The paper also discusses the use of object oriented environments for traditional SPGs and simulation programming languages.

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A visual programming system is described that allows the modeler full flexibility in defining the behavior of a manufacturing system simulation model. Decision-making behavior of objects in the simulation can be viewed by watching an animation of the system layout, viewing function block diagrams of rules that govern behavior, or noting the progress of an object in carrying out sequences of activities that are pictured as operation networks. Rules, elemental operations and operation networks are structured and associated with particular objects, groups of objects, and locations on the manufacturing system layout. The objective of this system is to reduce the time and expense required to construct and modify models, given that manufacturing system data have been collected.