Aerospace Manufacturing Industry: A Simulation-Based Decision Support Framework for the Scheduling of Complex Hoist Lines

The hoist scheduling problem is a critical issue in the design and control of Automated Manufacturing Systems. To deal with the major complexities appearing in such problem, this work introduces an advanced simulation model to represent the short-term scheduling of complex hoist lines. The aim is to find the best jobs schedule that minimizing the makespan while maximizing throughput with no defective outputs. Several hard constraints are considered in the model: single shared hoist, heterogeneous recipes, eventual recycles flows, and no buffers between workstations. Different heuristic-based strategies are incorporated into the computer model in order to improve the solutions generated over time. The alternative solutions can be quickly evaluated by using a graphical user interface developed together with the simulation model.Fil: Basán, Natalia Paola. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Pulido, Raul. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid; EspañaFil: Coccola, Mariana Evangelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Mendez, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentin

An innovative discrete event simulation tool to improve the efficiency of a complex beer packaging line

Discrete event simulation (DES) techniques cover a broad collection of methods and applications that allow imitating, assessing, predicting and enhancing the behavior of large and complex real-world processes. This work introduces a modern DES framework, developed with SIMIO simulation software, to optimize both the design and operation of a complex beer packaging system. The proposed simulation model provides a 3D user-friendly graphical interface which allows evaluating the dynamic operation of the system over time. In turn, the simulation model has been used to perform a comprehensive sensitive analysis over the main process variables. In this way, several alternative scenarios have been assessed in order to achieve remarkable performance improvements. Numerical results generated by the DES model clearly show that production and efficiency can be significantly enhanced when the packaging line is properly set up.Una herramienta innovadora de simulación de eventos discretos para mejorar la eficiencia de una línea compleja de envasado de cerveza. Las técnicas de simulación de eventos discretos (DES) abarcan una amplia colección de métodos y aplicaciones que permiten imitar, evaluar, predecir y mejorar el comportamiento de procesos complejos del mundo real. Este trabajo presenta un ambiente moderno de DES, desarrollado con el software de simulación SIMIO, para optimizar tanto el diseño y funcionamiento de un complejo sistema de envasado de cerveza. El modelo propuesto proporciona una interfaz tridimensional gráfica que resulta fácil de usar y permite la evaluación de la operación del sistema a través del tiempo. A su vez, el modelo de simulación se ha utilizado para llevar a cabo un análisis de sensibilidad sobre las principales variables del proceso. De esta forma, se han evaluado diferentes escenarios alternativos con el fin de conseguir notables mejoras en el rendimiento. Los resultados numéricos generados por el modelo DES muestran claramente que la producción y la eficiencia se pueden mejorar de manera significativa cuando la línea de envasado presenta una adecuada configuración.Fil: Basán, Natalia Paola. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico Para la Industria Química (i); ArgentinaFil: Coccola, Mariana Evangelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico Para la Industria Química (i); ArgentinaFil: Mendez, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico Para la Industria Química (i); Argentin

Optimizing the inventorying and distribution of chemical fluids: An innovative nested column generation approach

Vendor-managed-inventory is a successful business practices based on the cooperation between a supplier and its customers in which demand and inventory information from the customers are shared with the supplier. This practice is gaining popularity in the chemical industry and relies on the inventory-routing-problem, which integrates inventory management, vehicle routing, and delivery scheduling decisions. This one is a difficult combinatorial optimization problem both theoretically and practically. However, because of the large expenses involved in distribution and inventorying of chemical products, it is attractive to make use of optimization tools for exploiting as many degrees of freedom as possible with the goal of minimizing both distribution and inventorying costs. Consequently, we propose a nested column generation algorithm for solving an inventorying and distribution problem that models the delivery of several chemicals fluids. The approach is building on a column generation & incomplete branch-and-price algorithm in which for each delivery route, the delivery patterns of fluids are also determined by column generation. We detail the implementation and provide computational results for realistic test instances.Fil: Coccola, Mariana Evangelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Mendez, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Dondo, Rodolfo Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentin

An effective MILP-based decomposition algorithm for the scheduling and redesign of flexible job-shop plants

This paper presents a decomposition algorithm for the integrated scheduling and redesign problem of a multistage batch plant dealing with multipurpose units and heterogeneous recipes. First, the procedure solves the scheduling problem considering the existing plant configuration with the main goal of minimizing the makespan. Then, a second objective of minimizing the number of units utilized without worsen the makespan achieved in the first stage is considered. The units released can be reallocated to other compatible processing stages in order to minimize the initial makespan value. In order to tackle large industrial examples, both scheduling and redesign problems are solved through a decomposition algorithm, which has a MILP model as its core. The procedure is tested on several realistic instances, demonstrating its robustness and applicability.Fil: Basán, Natalia Paola. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Coccola, Mariana Evangelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: del Valle, Alejandro García. Universidad da Coruña; EspañaFil: Mendez, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentin

An iterative MILP-based approach for maritime logistics and transportation of multi-parcel chemical tankers

The cost-effective routing and scheduling of a fleet of multi-parcel chemical tankers represents a centraldecision making process in both chemical and shipping industry. Ships designed for the transport of liquidor gas in bulk are called tankers. Shippers seek to choose the cargos to transport and determine theoptimal route that the ship should follow to maximize its profit. Due to determining the optimal assignmentand routing decisions of a large set of cargos transported by a ship fleet is inherently NP-hard,real-world problems are either intractable or result in poor solutions when solved with pure optimizationapproaches. To overcome this limitation, this work introduces a new continuous time precedence-basedMILP mathematical formulation that is then embedded within a heuristic-based algorithm in order toobtain near-optimal solutions to large-scale problems. The applicability and efficiency of the proposedapproach is illustrated by solving a real case of study corresponding to a sea-cargo shipping companyoperating in South-East Asia. Computational results show notable improvements and better performancewhen compared to other alternative reported solution techniquesFil: Coccola, Mariana Evangelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Mendez, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentin

Logistics Management in Maritime Transportation Systems

The efficient routing and scheduling of multi-parcel chemical tankers is a challenging problem for both chemical and shipping industry. To optimally manage complex logistics problem, a novel continuous time precedence-based MILP mathematical formulation is developed to determine the optimal solution to the ship routing and scheduling. The approach aims to determine the assignment of cargos to ships and define the optimal route that each ship should follow to maximize its profit. The MILP-based model is then combined with an iterative algorithm in order to tackle large-scale problems involving a large numbers of ships, ports, and cargos. To illustrate the applicability and importance of the proposed method, a real industrial case study taken from literature is solved with modest CPU times.Fil: Coccola, Mariana Evangelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico Para la Industria Química (i); ArgentinaFil: Mendez, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico Para la Industria Química (i); Argentin

A two-stage procedure for efficiently solving the integrated problem of production, inventory, and distribution of industrial products

This paper deals with the problem of optimally planning the production, inventory and distribution of products transported via multi-compartment vehicles. It assumes that facilities in the distribution network have preservation-storing devices to inventory products on-site. Production activities may be performed on any time period of the planning horizon. Due to problem complexity, a two-stage solution strategy that first generates a set of multi-period distribution routes through a column generation approach is proposed. The routes are used for feeding the MILP formulation of the problem. Several valid inequalities are proposed for expediting the MILP resolution. The aim is to maximize the profit obtained by the company that fabricates and distributes the products. This profit is computed as the total income from sales minus the sum of all costs incurred along the planning horizon. The effectiveness of the two-stage solution strategy is tested on an extensive set of realistic instances.Fil: Coccola, Mariana Evangelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentina. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Concepción del Uruguay; ArgentinaFil: Mendez, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Dondo, Rodolfo Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentin

A decomposition framework for managing inventory and distribution of fluid products by an order-based-resupply methodology

Fluid chemicals are usually distributed according two main methodologies; the vendor managed inventory modality and the order-based re-supply modality. In this paper, the problem of optimizing the delivery of fluids by tanker trucks on a daily basis according the order-basedresupply methodology is addressed. According to this modality, replenishment orders are triggered by customers specifying the quantity of fluids and time-windows within which the delivery must be fulfilled. The objective is to minimize the replenishment cost while meeting customers orders over the pre-defined time-horizon. An Integer Program modelling the problem is proposed and used to develop an incomplete branch & price procedure with the purpose of finding near optimal solutions to instances arising from realistic examples. A computational study on realistic examples with different topologies demonstrates that the method is effective and able to provide solutions with integrality gaps below the 16% threshold for instances with 120 orders.Fil: Coccola, Mariana Evangelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Mendez, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Dondo, Rodolfo Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Litoral; Argentin

A MILP-based column generation strategy for managing large-scale maritime distribution problems

This paper presents a novel column generation algorithm for managing the logistics activities performed by a fleet of multi-parcel chemical tankers. In our procedure, for providing elementary routes, the conventional dynamic programming routes-generator is replaced by an efficient continuous-time MILP-slave problem. The performance of the decomposition method is evaluated by solving several examples dealing with the operations of a shipping company operating in the Asia Pacific Region. Computational results show that the proposed approach outperforms a pure exact optimization model and an alternative heuristic solution method reported in the literature.Fil: Coccola, Mariana Evangelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico Para la Industria Química (i); ArgentinaFil: Dondo, Rodolfo Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico Para la Industria Química (i); ArgentinaFil: Mendez, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico Para la Industria Química (i); Argentin

Toward Integrated Production and Distribution Management in Multi-Echelon Supply Chains

The effective management of multi-site systems involves the proper coordination of activities performed in multiple factories, distribution centers (DCs), retailers and end-users located in many different cities, countries and/or continents. To optimally manage numerous production and transportation decisions, a novel monolithic continuous-time MILP-based framework is developed to determine the best short-term operational planning to meet all customer requests at minimum total cost. The formulation lies on the unit-specific general precedence concept for the production scheduling problem whereas the immediate precedence notion is used for transportation decisions. To illustrate the applicability and potential benefits of the model, a challenging example corresponding to a supply chain comprising several locations geographically spread in six European countries has been solved to optimality with modest CPU times. Several scenarios with different logistics features were addressed in order to remark the significant advantages of using the integrated approach.Fil: Coccola, Mariana Evangelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico Para la Industria Química (i); ArgentinaFil: Zamarripa, Miguel. Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya; EspañaFil: Mendez, Carlos Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico Para la Industria Química (i); ArgentinaFil: Espuña, Antonio. Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya; Españ