Unifying manufacturing simulation models using HLA

The increasing use of simulation in manufacturing has seen an increase in simulation models created using many simulation package. This use of different simulators can create simulation islands in a manufacturing factory, making it difficult to get a true simulated overview of the factory. At present, there are only a few cases where manufacturing simulations have been linked to enable multiple simulation models to run as one. This research expands upon these cases. For this paper the topic of discussion is the research in connecting different 'Commercial Off The Shelf' simulators together to allow flow of all information through the connected models using high level architecture.