In recent years the importance of production network modeling has increased significantly, as companies face rising complexity and dynamics in their environment. Quantitative models help to gain understanding and support strategic decision making in production network management. Choosing the right abstraction level by determining the trade-off between model accuracy and effort for modeling is crucial for developing viable and applicable models. While experienced model builders can identify the right abstraction level intuitionally, a structured process would lead to results which are more consistent. This paper presents an approach to structure and streamline the determination of the abstraction level. A basic concept is presented, that enables systematic definition of the abstraction level for a given model framework. A process implementing the concept is proposed, that helps to identify the right abstraction level based on case-specific requirements and restrictions and tailor the model to solve the examined problem. The process is tested in a case study at a globally operating tooling machine company.
