Simulation of the coating process is a very promising approach for the understanding of thin film formation. Nevertheless, this complex matter cannot be covered by a single simulation technique. To consider all mechanisms and processes influencing the optical properties of the growing thin films, various common theoretical methods have been combined to a multi-scale model approach. The simulation techniques have been selected in order to describe all processes in the coating chamber, especially the various mechanisms of thin film growth, and to enable the analysis of the resulting structural as well as optical and electronic layer properties. All methods are merged with adapted communication interfaces to achieve optimum compatibility of the different approaches and to generate physically meaningful results. The present contribution offers an approach for the full simulation of an Ion Beam Sputtering (IBS) coating process combining direct simulation Monte Carlo, classical molecular dynamics, kinetic Monte Carlo, and density functional theory. The simulation is performed exemplary for an existing IBS-coating plant to achieve a validation of the developed multi-scale approach. Finally, the modeled results are compared to experimental data. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.