Design and manufacture of ITER's reactor and ancillary equipment is performed by widely dispersed, collaborating teams. The IO central team will be responsible for on-site assembly, installation and maintenance.

To guarantee the assembly and maintenance schedules will require a high degree of confidence in the associated procedures and hardware, which must be developed in parallel with component design. Since a physical mock-up is largely ruled out by the the scale of the equipment, these processes will be developed and verified using CAD simulation.

ITER has deployed simulation tools which are integrated with the design office CAD system and PDM, to leverage the existing digital mockup. Kinematic equipment, such as tools and robots, are built on existing 3D data and assigned 'tasks' in process simulations. Human activities can also be modeled. Simulations are based on process plans, either developed interactively during the course of a study or imported from an external source, for validation of pre-defined processes. Detailed analysis and optimization of procedures are performed using tools for clash/clearance detection and path-planning.