The recent circular economy movement has raised awareness and interest about untapped environmental and economic potential in the manufacturing industry. One of the crucial aspects in the implementation of circular or closedloop manufacturing approach is the design of circular products. While it is obvious that three post-use strategies, i.e., reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling, are highly relevant to achieve loop closure, it is enormously challenging to choose “the right” strategy (if at...
This paper deals with manpower planning using a dynamic and interactive simulation system that is agile and adaptive to robustly accommodate change — without requiring a complete rewrite. The simulation architecture extends the current hybrid modelling paradigm which integrates agent based (AB) constraints and controls with a discrete event simulation (DES) methodology. This allows for a more expressive, authentic representation of both process flows and agent policies that captures the...
This paper addresses the design of an Automated Material Handling System (AMHS) for wafer lots in the photolithography workshop of a 200mm wafer manufacturing facility (fab) that was not initially built to have such a system. Lots transportation has to be performed using an Overhead Hoist Transport (OHT) system that was already chosen to transport reticles in the workshop. The main objective is to propose a decision support tool to characterize the Automated Material Handling System elements...
Supply chain (SC) planning in the semiconductor industry is challenged by high uncertainties on the demand side as well as a complex manufacturing process with non-deterministic failure modes on the production side. Understanding the complex interdependencies and processes of a supply chain is essential to realize opportunities and mitigate risks. However, this understanding is not easy to achieve due to the complexity of the processes and the non-deterministic human behavior determining supply...
This paper introduces a practical approach for the comprehensive simulation based planning and optimization of the production and logistics of a discrete goods manufacturer. Although simulation and optimization are well-established planning aides in production and logistics, their actual application in the field is still scarce, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is largely due to the complexity of the planning task and lack of practically applicable approaches for...
The integration of information systems between the various actors organizing and executing the transport of containers to seaports is slowly progressing. Transport orders are frequently characterized by high change rates causing high manual revision effort for dispatchers. Therefore, these order changes, often received shortly before the day of departure, raise the question regarding the immediate transmission of transport orders to the subsequent actors in the transport chain. This paper...
Home hospital services; provide some hospital level services at the patient’s residence. The services include for example: palliative care, administering chemotherapy drugs, changing dressings and care for newborns. The rationale of the service is that by providing high quality care to patients at their homes their experience of the care is better and hence they respond to the treatment and/or recover quicker and are less likely to need to report to hospital to receive care for more...
There is a growing trend in the number of M&S studies that report on the use of Hybrid Simulation. However, the meaning and the usage of the term varies considerably. Indeed, the hybrid simulation panel during last year’s conference (WSC2016) laid bare the strong views, from the panelists and audience alike, as to what constitutes a hybrid model and what is new? The ensuing debate set the scene for this year’s paper, in which we discuss the various perspectives on hybrid simulation by focusing...