Abstract
US manufacturers' capabilities have consistently been degrading over the past few decades with no end in sight. To ebb this tide and assist the decision-makers in designing better configurations and system capabilities, this paper proposes the use of smart manufacturing systems (SMS) to develop a framework that generates and evaluates pre-implementation near optimal manufacturing configurations and provide guidance to establishing appropriate information messaging protocols between system components using hybrid simulation modelling. The framework calls for the implementation of computer-based tools including an expert system to identify the required machines and their corresponding characteristics, a business process modelling and notation tool to capture the process plan in an object-oriented fashion and an agent unified modelling language tool to guide the application of message sequence diagram and state charts, in addition, a hybrid simulation tool to assist in determining the correct configuration, an agent-based modelling tool to capture the behaviour of the required machines and a discrete event simulation tool to mimic the process flow.The application of the proposed framework to a manufacturing case study shows positive outcomes to support upper management in the planning phase of establishing a SMS or evaluating an existing one.