Abstract
Emerging need of shoes manufacturing that is smaller in number but has more variety has encouraged factories to encompass more styles of shoes in one production cycle. A simulation model was built to enable assessment of style addition to a production facility. To do so, the model has to be able to accommodate changes between style numbers. This study proposes a global arrangement for stations, as opposed to station-based simulation profiling, in order to ease switches between style numbers. To further see model's behavior, the model is tested under small and large number of shoes styles. The result shows that the model can be used with various style numbers. Using the differences obtained through selected parameters, deployment of production with different number of shoes styles can be assessed. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg..