Modelling, Simulation and Optimization of a Packaging and Palletizing System

Abstract

This paper presents a material flow management case study based on our research in modelling, simulation and optimization for a packaging and palletizing system. The studied system allows packaging, palletizing, wrapping and storage of several types of products within a food company. For each type of product to be packaged and stored a material flow system simulation is necessary in order to identify and eliminate the bottlenecks and to obtain an optimized system in terms of productivity. Because the optimization algorithm is the same for different kind of products we will illustrate our research using a single type of product. We will focus the case study on packaging coffee bags in boxes. The boxes are positioned on pallets in order to create a stack that will be wrapped for storage. We used Flexim 7 simulation software for modelling, simulation and optimization of the packaging and palletizing system.