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In recent years, paradigms like production quality or zero-defect manufacturing have emerged, highlighting the need to improve quality and reduce waste in manufacturing systems. Although quality can be analyzed from various points of view during different stages of a manufacturing system's lifecycle, this research focuses on a multidomain simulation model definition oriented toward the analysis of productivity and geometric quality during early design stages. To avoid inconsistencies, the authors explored the definition of descriptive models using system modeling language (SysML) profiles that capture domain-specific semantics defining object constraint language (OCL) rules, facilitating the assurance of model completeness and consistency regarding this specific knowledge. This paper presents a SysML profile for the simulation of geometric deviation propagation in multistage manufacturing systems (SysML4GDPSim), containing the concepts for the analysis of two data flows: (a) coupled discrete behavior simulation characteristic of manufacturing systems defined using discrete events simulation (DEVS) formalism; and (b) geometric deviation propagation through the system based on the geometrical modeling of artifacts using concepts from the topologically and technologically related surfaces (TTRS) theory. Consistency checking for this type of multidomain simulation model and the adoption of TTRS for the mathematical analysis of geometric deviations are the main contributions of this work, oriented towards facilitating the collaboration between design and analysis experts in the manufacturing domain. Finally, a case study shows the application of the proposed profile for the simulation model of an assembling line, including the model's transformation to Modelica and some experimental results of this type of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is one of the most important simulation techniques in decision-making in several areas. Some authors state that small and large companies can benefit significantly through the utilisation of DES. Literature shows that most DES studies carried out are at large companies. Studies carried out at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been mostly explored on a one-off, caseby-case basis, given the characteristics and limitations of smaller companies. In order to expand DES studies in a wide range of companies, this article seeks to consider the SME characteristics and limitations prevent them from broadly adopting traditional (“hard”) DES. Then an alternative application of DES in “soft” mode was proposed. A review of facilitated DES frameworks was carried out. The frameworks were critically analysed in this review in relation to their adequacy to specific SME requirements and similar contexts. Finally, some issues and characteristics of these frameworks are presented that make directly applying in these contexts difficult. Furthermore, some suggestions are proposed for developing future facilitated DES frameworks. (Received in February 2022, accepted in May 2022. This paper was with the authors 3 weeks for 1 revision.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]