Supply chain multi-structural (re)-design
Many developed countries of the world such as Japan, Korea, Singapore, Germany etc., are facing the issue of decreasing birth rates and increasing aged populations. One of the potential solutions for this problem is liberal immigration and refugee laws. Korea has stringent immigration laws and most of the immigration into the country is temporary in nature. However, we have witnessed exodus from Middle East countries to many European countries. Such a phenomenon could have lasting impacts on...
Increasing occurrence of natural disturbances such as windstorms and high snow cover as well as uncer-tainty according to queuing and lead times, bottlenecks, utilization, stock level, wagon and truck availability and machine breakdowns lead to supply chain risks and seasonal irregularities in wood harvest and transport. Innovative multimodal systems via rail terminals offer the potential to increase buffer capacity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, a train terminal is included in...
This case study considers the simulation of a coal lading port in order to determine which extensions are needed based on expected capacity demands. These investigations are executed in cooperation with the German company TAKRAF GmbH which planned and constructed the considered port. Processes at this port are influenced by uncertainties, like the provided coal mix from mines and transportation times from mines to the port or meteorological disturbances. The maximum capacity of the current...
A worldwide leading company in the cosmetic industry was dealing with great challenges regarding adapting its positioning strategy to the dynamically changing behaviors of the market. The company needed to decide where to invest its marketing budget to optimize its revenue and was using different traditional marketing mix models without any success. A marketing mix model was developed using agent-based modeling to predict the market’s reaction to a given distribution of a certain budget among...
Simulation modelling has long been used as a decision support tool in the mining industry. This is typically done to address issues on the strategic time horizon, with a heavy focus on experimentation and sensitivity analysis. These issues include mining equipment selection, pit optimization, design and operation of the mine-plant interface, testing the robustness of a mine plan and blending. Mining simulators can be used to forecast production in the short term to test the quality of truck...
We discuss the application of simulation to estimate a nominal, or target, processing times for work stations on a serial assembly line. The expectation is that having different processing times per station per product will increase the throughput of the line, compared to having a constant time for all stations. A demonstration case at ABB Robotics in Sweden will be presented. This is a small part in the “Process Automation for Discrete Manufacturing Excellence” project (PADME) involving five...
In many curricula and degree programs, simulation courses are not required, but these tools and techniques could be beneficial to students preparing for a variety of careers. The current paper describes two examples of simulation education embedded into broader course topics from a development perspective. The examples, from courses generally described in this paper as Cloud Computing and Big Data, offer a recommended approach for exposing students to practical uses of simulation. In the first...
Today, the demand for higher building security has grown considerably, especially for evacuations in cases of fire, chemical, biological and radiological incidents or terrorist attacks. However, the planning of relevant safety measures for new buildings or the evaluation of existing buildings requires reliable information for a farsighted decision making. Simulation tools that can realistically map the spread of fire, smoke and pollutants in buildings already exist, but they are...