Rockwell Arena Research Articles

Developing a framework for generating production-dependent failure rate through discrete-event simulation

Over the last decades, maintenance has experienced a transition from being a necessary evil to being a pivotal resource to create value for enterprises. Within the process of maintenance planning, distinct decisions could be responsible for different outcomes concerning profit and equipment reliability. Consequently, maintenance optimization has become pivotal to achieving relevant business goals. One of the most popular approaches to conduct maintenance optimization is simulation-based optimization, especially Discrete-Event Simulation (DES). Most works related to DES for maintenance optimization purposes focus on modeling imperfect maintenance or imperfect inspection and prognosis, while failures are often generated through a Weibull distribution. However, failure strongly depends on the production rate or the stress level, defining a Dynamic Non-Homogeneous Poisson Process (DNHPP). To this end, this paper proposes an algorithm for scheduling such DNHPP failure events in a DES framework model and, as a first implementation to apply it, an open-access library capable of generating stress level-dependent failures within the Rockwell ARENA© simulation environment. The developed package, that in the future will be ported to other relevant off-the-shelf simulation environments, provides a more realistic tool for maintenance engineers and researchers to optimize or compare maintenance strategies from an economic perspective.

The impact of fatigue on shipyard welding workers’ occupational health and safety and performance

Welding processes are critical for shipbuilding operations in shipyards. Welders’ performance is critical for the quality and speed of the welding; on the other hand, welding requires awkward and repetitive body postures for long durations, which has a negative impact on the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) of the welding workers. This study, therefore, investigates the long-term impact of welding workload on the body for different age groups and experience levels, as well as the long-term impact on chronic fatigue and inter-shift recovery. In order to determine the impact, this study conducted a comprehensive data collection campaign in the shipyard through observation and questionnaires. Results indicate that the eyes, knee, neck and waist are the most discomforted body parts for investigated welding positions. The age of welders was an important parameter of the most affected body part.Moreover, the short-term fatigue impact on welding performance was also investigated to identify the impact on productivity. The Discrete event simulation (Rockwell ARENA) demonstrated that efficiency loss from short-term daily fatigue is around 22,9% compared to the rested condition. The main contribution of this study was investigating fatigue impact on OHS and productivity for selected shipbuilding tasks. The findings of this study can be utilised for shipyard production capacity and resource planning and OHS improvements. The results can also be used further as a coefficient of performance in the production simulation analysis when studying shipyard efficiency. This is a valuable contribution to the literature on shipyard productivity.

Development of Aircraft Movement Simulation in Airport Airside Area

Soekarno-Hatta Intl Airport had become busier every and each year passed. Based on Airnav’s data in 2016, there was about 1.200 aircraft movement, included take-off and landing, happened in Soekarno-Hatta Intl Airport in one day. These numerous movements made Soekarno-Hatta Intl Airport became the 12th busiest airport in the world based on Airport Council International (ACI). The long queue of the aircraft at the taxiway is deniable and became one of the problems that needs to be resolved. This research would make aircrafts movement simulation in Soekarno-Hatta Intl Airport’s taxiway(s) using Rockwell Arena Simulation software. The simulation results would be total taxiing time of an aircraft, which intersection(s) that traffic happened, and the total of aircraft(s) that doing taxi in and taxi out. This simulation would help to determine and evaluate the factors that initiated the queue in the taxiway and modify taxiing route to reduce the traffic. The results of this research can be applied by the airport as a reference for scheduling aircraft’s departing or arriving, develop airport airside facility, and to improve taxiing route so the duration of aircraft’s taxiing time can be reduced

Simulation Based Approach for Improving Outpatient Clinic Operations

The aim of this study is to suggest the optimum number and schedule of doctors at the OPD (Out-Patient Department) of Gastrology of a hospital in Pakistan. In order to achieve this aim, the discrete event simulation model is developed to minimize waiting time of patients. Data is collected for one week from the OPD; Data collection variables are arrival and service rate of patients, their salaries/income, patient‘s OPD fee, doctor’s charges/patient, service time of patients at each of service channel i.e. reception, triage and doctors’ cabin. Stop watch is used for recording the service time of patients. Input analyzer is used to reveal the distribution of the data. Rockwell arena software version 14.5 is used to model and simulate the queuing system of the outpatient department. Scenario analysis is conducted in four scenarios; in each of the scenario doctors were assumed to be seated for one additional hour. During the period of data collection, it is observed that most of the patients are coming with an appointment of doctors therefore, it is not justified to suggest the hiring of new doctor; especially when patients are coming for the particular doctor; therefore, already available doctors are suggested to be seated longer in the OPD; that is the way to serve the maximum number of patients in the virtual queue of patients that has been kept waiting for having an appointment and for their turn to see the doctor.

Analysis of the Evacuation Route Effectiveness Based on the Hotel’s Visitor Evacuation Speed (Case Study: Grand Kanaya Hotel, Medan)

The territory of Indonesia has geographical, geological, hierarchical and demographic conditions that enable disasters or emergencies, whether caused by natural or non-natural factors. When an emergency occurs, evacuation must be carried out as quickly and effectively as possible to minimize losses. Evacuation Emergency conditions are things that need to be considered by every building manager. However, until now buildings are still often found that are operating but have not met the requirements of building function worthy certificates. The hotel building is one of the buildings that need to be considered is the emergency response system and its evacuation route. The hotel building is a vertical residential building that has many users and activities, so it requires an optimal evacuation route. This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of evacuation routes in hotel buildings and recommend proper evacuation routes for a hotel building. A descriptive study was conducted to determine the existing conditions and simulations using Rockwell Arena software to determine the visitor's evacuation speed in hotel buildings. The results of the research and simulation of Rockwell Arena software indicate that the evacuation path in hotel buildings has not been sufficient so that design recommendations are needed to improve the effectiveness of evacuation routes. This research can be used as a reference and consideration for finding out the problems that exist on the evacuation routes in hotel buildings.

Evaluation Of Evacuation Routes And Fire Prevention Management On High Rise Buildings (Case Study: Millenium ICT Center, Medan)

In the form of evacuation routes, safety handling must be prioritized especially in high-rise buildings. When the fire occurs, the most important thing apart from extinguishing the fire is to bring the occupants out of the building as soon as possible to prevent any casualties. It is necessary to take effective, efficient and integrated fire hazard prevention measures in a management system so that its implementation and renewal can follow the needs. This is also regulated in building regulations and is technically regulated in the Indonesian National Standard. Shopping center building is for example. Shopping center should put more attention to the accessibility aspects of evacuation routes for users. The scoping study of Millennium ICT Center includes the existence of facilities and infrastructure for evacuation and fire management of buildings, evacuation time of building residents, using descriptive study methods with quantitative analytical, and simulation methods using Rockwell Arena Simulation Software. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of accessibility to facilities, infrastructure, and building fire management of Millennium ICT Center as well as evacuation route travel time meet the requirements, safety and comfort standards of building users.

Socio-economic impact of the construction of an intermodal connection in Puerto Salgar, Cundinamarca

The aim of this work is to show the socio-economic impact in the Cundinamarca-Boyacá plateau produced by the construction and promotion of an alternative to relieve the freight transportation system in the region, and how it echoes in the manufacturing levels of the ship industry. For this reason, it is evaluated the option of establishing a logistics area in the town of Puerto Salgar (Cundinamarca) where may confluence an intermodal transportation system which emphasizes the Magdalena River as the main way for the country’s development and Puerto Salgar as the main axis for the economic growth of the plateau. The Discrete Event Simulation (DES) methodology was used for this work, using information given by previous studies by the Ministerio de Transporte, the Dirección Nacional de Planeación and the Instituto Nacional de Vías; setting a conceptual model which determines and limit the study, and implementing a Rockwell Arena simulation.

Characteristics of the systems of computer modelling and simulation of production processes

The article presents an analysis of possibilities offered by the use of modelling and simulation method in production management, by presenting its essence, types and examples of production process models. In addition, the article presents the characteristics of computer modelling and simulation systems, which help to streamline production processes. The most commonly used programs such as AnyLogic, ShowFlow 2 and Rockwell Arena were described in detail. The concepts of modelling and simulation have been also clarified.

Improving Energy Efficiency for the Vehicle Assembly Industry: A Discrete Event Simulation Approach

This paper presented a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model for investigating and improving energy efficiency in vehicle assembly line. The car manufacturing industry is one of the highest energy consuming industries. Using Rockwell Arena DES package; a detailed model was constructed for an actual vehicle assembly plant. The sources of energy considered in this research are electricity and fuel; which are the two main types of energy sources used in a typical vehicle assembly plant. The model depicts the performance measurement for process- specific energy measures of painting, welding, and assembling processes. Sound energy efficiency model within this industry has two-fold advantage: reducing CO2 emission and cost reduction associated with fuel and electricity consumption. The paper starts with an overview of challenges in energy consumption within the facilities of automotive assembly line and highlights the parameters for energy efficiency. The results of the simulation model indicated improvements for energy saving objectives and reduced costs.

A Bimodal Transportation Model for Steam Coal Exportation Based on Magdalena River as Main Waterway

The aim of this work is to offer a new alternative to allow the release of the Colombian coal transportation system that nowadays is under a saturation state. For this reason it is proposed, the option of making the exportation of the surplus production granted by the thermic coal mining activity focused on the Cesar department, through a bimodal transportation system that will highlight on the Magdalena River as the most important way for the logistic development of the country. As main key and support tool, the Discrete Event Simulation (DES) methodology was used for conducting experiments based on information which has given the characterization of the proposed system. Hence, the establishment of the conceptual model that determinated and limit the system, a simulation in the software Rockwell Arena was implemented which results were tested and analyzed to study the performance of itself.

Maintenance policy in job-shop manufacturing systems with reminder cell

The market fluctuations can reduce drastically the performance of manufacturing systems. Among several configurations, the configuration with a reminder machine/cell in a manufacturing system has been recently studied. The remainder machine is able to perform all the manufacturing operations needed in the manufacturing system. This paper investigates the effect of a hybrid preventive/corrective maintenance policy in a manufacturing system with reminder machine. The maintenance policy proposed is a trade off between the preventive and corrective approach. A simulation environment developed by Rockwell ARENA is proposed to test the proposed approach. The maintenance policy is tested in static and very dynamic environment. The performance measures are compared to a model with pure corrective policy. The simulation results show that the proposed maintenance policy with the use of reminder machine can improve significantly the performance of manufacturing systems.

Analysing Istanbul Strait Maritime Pilot Capacity by Simulation Technique

Nautical services should be allocated efficiently as they have great resource costs. In this paper, the Marine Pilotage Service in the Istanbul Strait has been analysed by using Rockwell Arena Simulation Software. The purpose of the study is to find the required number of marine pilots for vessel traffic flow in the Istanbul Strait. It is evaluated thoroughly by a stochastic, dynamic, discrete simulation for safe service standards in pilotage. The result of the paper shows that discrete simulation technique is an efficient and reliable way of solving complex techno-nautical service allocation problems as proven by experts. As the discrete simulation result data shows, most other techno-nautical services can also be modelled and optimised by using similar techniques. Areas like optimisation of the number of pilots, tugs, resource allocation problems, berthing area selections and many more complex and inherently stochastic problems can be reliably solved by simulation experiments.

A fuzzy control system to adjust the number of cards in a CONWIP-based manufacturing system

The research presented in this paper concerns a dynamic control card strategy to capture the market changes and keep a high level of the performance measures. The methodology proposed is based on the development of a fuzzy controller that adjusts the number of cards. The inputs of the fuzzy controller are the observation of the demand fluctuations and the throughput rate of the manufacturing system. The throughput rate detects the state of the manufacturing system while the demand fluctuations try to forecast the demand fluctuations. The demand fluctuations are evaluated computing two averages: the first on a medium horizon and the second on a short horizon. A discrete event simulation environment based on Rockwell ARENA® platform is developed to test the proposed approach. The benefits of the fuzzy approach are more relevant in case of demand and uncertainty processing times considering the reliability of the manufacturing system.

A simulation approach to study emergency response

Simulation provides a significant tool in studying transportation systems and emergency response, allowing various scenarios of the ‘smart environments’ to be tested before real-world implementation. The simulation environment built in this paper uses Rockwell ARENA simulation software to provide a test bed for studying emergency response in a transportation network. With the data sources and assumptions used in building a roadway network with realistic traffic flow, accounting for both weather and congestion, a small study area in Western New York (WNY) provides the test bed based on real-life observations. After generating the expected movement of traffic, vehicular crashes are simulated, followed by Emergency Medical Service response. This paper focuses on the development process for building a simulation capable of modelling vehicular movement throughout a study area and a validation of the emergency vehicle travel times through historical crash response data in an existing traffic network. Its goal is to provide the basis of future work, enabling advanced transportation systems to be evaluated with respect to increased situation awareness resulting from optimized sensor placement, data fusion techniques and improved emergency response.

Integration of Dynamic Resource Management in Discrete Event Models Using Arena Software

Computer modelling of many real life systems is always challenged with how the dynamic changes of resources and queues are handled and integrated. In this paper, we integrate the dynamic changes of resources and queues in a discrete event model using Rockwell Software Arena, one of most used software tools in modelling discrete events, as it includes and considers the resources by queuing components both at fixed and predetermined level. The model proposed by the authors will extend this to the dynamic level by including the multiple queues that may require regrouping, verification and reallocation. The structure of this new model simply replaces all the external approaches to the management and synchronization of the resources by an internal/within the software integration structure. This model may also be considered and added to the Rockwell Arena Smart file library as a solution to dynamic resource management.

Loading policies in cellular manufacturing systems with remainder cell

Cellular manufacturing systems (CMSs) are used when both production volume and product variety are at medium level. The fluctuations of volume and mix can reduce drastically the performance of classical CMSs. Therefore, several configurations have been proposed in literature as virtual manufacturing cells, fractal cells and remainder cells. This article investigates the cell-loading approaches in a manufacturing system composed of dedicated cells and a remainder cell. The remainder cell consists of machines that are able to manufacture all part families. The loading decision concerns the allocation of the parts to the remainder cell, instead of the dedicated cell. A simulation environment based on Rockwell Arena® has been developed to test the proposed approaches. The performance measures are evaluated in a very dynamic environment characterised by volume oscillations, mix fluctuations and machine failures. A classical CMS is used as a benchmark for the performance measures analysed. The simulation results show that the proposed policies lead to a better performance when market fluctuations occur.

The Reverse Logistic Process of an Automobile Supply Chain Network Supported by a Collaborative Decision-Making Model

Decision system technologies have long since been a strong support to model and solve planning complexities in the supply chain in a collaborative context. Moreover, one of the main topics to emerge is reverse logistics, which is becoming more relevant in supply chains in terms of the logistics process of removing new or used products from their initial point. Therefore, to present the main aspects that should be considered to share the decision information, which is already used among the members of the supply chain, a study of reverse logistics has been carried out to discover how decision-making activities support the process in supply chains. Furthermore, a simulation experiment has been performed with both the DGRAI 3.0 tool and Rockwell Arena 11® to observe the quality evolution of decision making and the economical impact that the proposed collaborative model will have on the current system. Moreover, this research work shows that a clear impact will appear on the decisional quality at the bottom levels of the supply chain than on the decisional quality of the whole system. The main work hypothesis is that the logistic process costs must lower given the implementation of the proposed collaborative model.

Introduction of Government Process Modeling with Rockwell Arena Software

Students in a core Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) course were taught to model and simulate selected business processes of government agencies and nonprofits with Rockwell Arena software. Each student or pair was asked to document an existing government process, in order to model and simulate a variation of the process, with a goal of improving service quality and/or lowering costs. Students found it challenging to make the transition from a simple model, taught as an example, to modeling and simulating real processes on the computer. Experiences are reported and suggestions are provided to others who may want to use Arena software to introduce process modeling into the Public Affairs and Administration curriculum.

Introduction of process modeling using Rockwell Arena

This paper describes the introduction of business process modeling and disaster simulation to graduate students using Rockwell Arena software in the summer of 2007. Students in a Public Administrat...