Agentic discrete-event simulation for manufacturing system design: an open 3D simulator, a benchmark and an industrial case

Javier Pernas-Álvarez, Diego Crespo-Pereira

The design of manufacturing systems relies on discrete-event simulation (DES) models that experts still build in tool-specific interfaces. AI agents can now write simulation code, but every model they write from scratch is new, unverified software. We present SimuLean, an open-source 3D DES simulator on the Unity engine designed to be programmed by AI agents: its modelling semantics are verified once, in the platform, and the agent builds and studies one model through domain-level commands, in the 3D scene or headless; physically simulated durations are calibrated for fast headless studies. We evaluated it on 18 manufacturing modelling tasks, from single machines to published production lines. A frontier agent built valid models in 93 of 108 attempts (86%), in about two minutes each; on the benchmark's interface version, two frontier agents built 105 of 108 models through domain commands alone, so that each comes with a record of how it was built. Every residual failure was silent - a model that builds and runs but answers wrongly - and only comparison with reference models revealed them all. In an industrial case, one agent working alone rebuilt, verified and studied a robotised…