ISSN 1330-3651 (Print), ISSN 1848-6339 (Online) (Style: Ariel Narrow, 8pt)

Original scientific paper Nowadays the production process with as few as possible deadlocks is the most important goal of management in every company. An optimized production process can be reached with well-trained personnel and especially with well-trained schedule planners. In this contribution, a new strategy on how to train production planners for different types of production by using virtual factory is presented. Also, two specially developed parametric simulation models for typical make-to-order and large-scale types of production are presented. Every model describes the real production process in detail so that it enables the observation of responses to the different input data. In the first step, the strategy covers the training of personnel so that they learn how varied input data reflect in the output results. The second strategy step is supporting schedule planning by using virtual factory where variants of schedule plans are tested much earlier than the real production process is performed.