Framework for Natural Language Processing to Automate Material Flow Simulation in Production System Planning

An increasingly dynamic market environment is enforcing greater changeability and flexibility in production systems. To address this complexity with simulation models, expert knowledge needs to be externalized. Therefore, we propose a framework that converts expert discussions and written documents into textual requirements to create simulation configurations. This automates the manual and time-consuming process of specifying the scenario and instantiating simulation models. We discuss the overall architecture that is able to understand complex technical language and explain the approach that dynamically adapts to new requirements. The natural language processing-based framework promises great potential of a seamless setup up of a-priori evaluations of productions systems to enable a comprehensive deployment of digital twins.