A production utilization planner (PUP) core for a manufacturing cell has a simulation manager configured to simulate the processing of workpieces arranged in a workpiece order, by performing the steps of: creating an instance of a simulation controller and an instance of a software model of the manufacturing cell, determining a next timed action to be performed by state machines, incrementing the simulation to the next timed action, updating the software model and the simulation controller each time a state machine performs a timed action, and repeating the steps of determining the next timed action, incrementing the simulation, and updating the software model and the simulation controller, until all of the workpieces have been processed. The simulation manager is configured to output a simulated completion time for processing the workpiece order.