System Dynamics-based Simulation Research Articles

System Dynamics-Based Simulation Analysis of the Policy of the Prefabricated Building Industry Chain

System Dynamics-Based Simulation Analysis of the Policy of the Prefabricated Building Industry Chain

A System Dynamics-Based Simulation Model for Cross-Border Logistics Risk Transmission

A System Dynamics-Based Simulation Model for Cross-Border Logistics Risk Transmission

Simulation to reallocate supply to committed orders under shortage

This article aims to deal with the reallocating supply problem in both its real and planned contexts, to orders that result from the order promising process under shortage. To this end, we propose a system dynamics-based simulation model to facilitate modelling for order managers, and to provide a graphic support tool to understand the process and to make decisions. The basis of the simulation model’s structure is a mixed-integer linear programming approach that intends to maximise profits by considering the possibility of making partial and delayed deliveries. To illustrate this, we consider a real-world problem from the ceramic sector that contemplates 35 orders. We obtained a solution by a mathematical programming model and a simulation model. The results show the simulation model’s capacity to obtain near-optimum results, and to provide a simulated history of the system.

Modelling performance management measures through statistics and system dynamics-based simulation

The objective of this paper is to establish a methodology that combines performance measurement, a statistical record of measures to identify any relations among them, and system dynamics-based simulation modeling with the aim of supporting operations decision systems. This methodology intends to provide the comprehensive analysis of performance in such a way that it also analyzes the sensitivity and optimization of certain metrics according to requirements in each case. In the literature, this appears as a poorly developed research area. Some relevant studies have been identified which have attempted this combination, but have not completely established it.

The Economic Effect of Virtual Warehouse-Based Inventory Information Sharing for Sustainable Supplier Management

With the rapid development of information and communication technologies, inventory information sharing between a manufacturer and its suppliers is becoming easier than ever. In line with this trend, we focus on the virtual warehouse where only inventory information on all of the material provided by the suppliers can be stored and shared. Unlike traditional supplier management, the manufacturer constructs and operates this virtual warehouse to check the inventory levels of all the required material at the same time, but each supplier can access only the information about its inventory. This virtual warehouse-based approach can foster a tight relationship between the manufacturer and its suppliers and can handle suppliers as a single company without a large investment in constructing a physical warehouse. The virtual warehouse-based approach seems to be more economically sustainable. To investigate the effect of inventory information sharing via the virtual warehouse, we developed and analyzed a system dynamics-based simulation model. The experiment results show that sharing the inventory information of the suppliers via the virtual warehouse can help manufacturers to achieve better operational performance on several important measures, such as the reduction of finished goods inventory, parts purchasing quantity, degree of backlogs, and total cost.

A system dynamics based simulation model to evaluate regulatory policies for sustainable transportation planning

Transportation is a major source of energy consumption and emission generation. To limit the negative environment impacts arising from transportation of goods and people, several initiatives and policies are being put in place by municipal administrators, local governments, and federal governments. Since transportation is a dynamic system in which the individual components and their interactions are changing over time, decision-makers need efficient approaches to investigate system behavior and devise sustainable transportation policies for the benefit of city, its residents, and their environment. In this paper, we propose a system dynamics-based simulation model to evaluate the impact of regulatory policies for sustainable transport planning. Causal loop diagrams are developed to investigate transportation system elements, their inter-relationships, and evolution of behavior over time. A numerical study for vehicle trip reduction is provided. The results of our simulation study reveal that trip-sharing policy effectively decreases congestion while car ownership decreases tendency of vehicular trips and increases public transit trips.

A water resources simulation gaming model for the Invitational Drought Tournament

A system dynamics-based simulation gaming model, developed as a component of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Invitational Drought Tournament (IDT; Hill et al., 2014), is introduced in this paper as a decision support tool for drought management at the river-basin scale. This IDT Model provides a comprehensive and integrated overview of drought conditions, and illustrates the broad effects of socio-economic drought and mitigation strategies. It is intended to provide a safe, user-friendly experimental environment with fast run-times for testing management options, and to promote collaborative decision-making and consensus building. Examples of model results from several recent IDT events demonstrate potential effects of drought and the short-to longer-term effectiveness of policies selected by IDT teams; such results have also improved teams' understanding of the complexity of water resources systems and their management trade-offs. The IDT Model structure and framework can also be reconfigured quickly for application to different river basins.

A system dynamics-based simulation model of production line with cross-trained workers

In order to promote efficiency of the production line from one car engine parts plant, we built the simulation model based on System Dynamics. However, the standard System Dynamics method cannot precisely describe and simulate the situation when we introduced the management policy of cross-training, which was applied by the plant to promote efficiency, into production. Therefore, we revised and updated the simulation model to adapt to our requirement of simulating the policy of cross-training. Moreover, thinking that the workers will use more energy to get familiar with operation accompanied by the application of cross-training, it is necessary for us to consider the effect of worker learning and forgetting and the heterogeneity within worker pool into our model to make it more close to reality. At last, we conducted experiments to test how the production line would be optimized under different cross-training tactics, worker management policies and worker team structures.

A system dynamics model for the supply chain procurement transport problem: comparing spreadsheets, fuzzy programming and simulation approaches

This article proposes a simulation approach based on system dynamics for operational procurement and transport planning in a two-level, multi-product and multi-period supply chain. This work uses the Vensim® simulation tool to highlight the potential of system dynamics for supply chain simulation. A real continuous simulation application is presented in an automobile supply chain. The effectiveness of the proposed model is validated through the comparison of the results provided by spreadsheet-based simulation, fuzzy multi-objective programming and system dynamics-based simulation models. The fundamental point of this paper is that the simulation model is the most effective approach in quantifying the trade-off between number of truck shipments and average inventory level. In this case, the number of truck shipments is to be minimised, resulting in a higher inventory level. If the average inventory level were minimised, then there would be more truck shipments. Here, it is shown the benefit of this type of simulation model in reducing inventory by about 10%.

High tech supply chain simulation based on dynamical systems model

During the last 45 years, system dynamics as a continuous type of simulation has been used for simulating various problems, ranging from economic to engineering and managerial when limited (historical) information is available. Control theory is another alternative for continuous simulation that also includes the modelling of differential equations, but mostly employed in engineering. Based on the system dynamics simulation model of Sterman’s high-tech growth firms, this paper studies the application of control theory simulation in design of a high-tech supply chain system and compares the results with those of system dynamics-based simulation. It is shown how easily supply chain processes can be translated into a control theory model using the differential equation approach in the place of Laplace transform. In addition, some improvements are also made on Sterman’s model.

A system dynamics-based simulation study for managing clinical governance and pathways in a hospital

This paper examines the development of clinical pathways (CP) in a hospital in Australia based on empirical clinical data of patient episodes. A system dynamics (SD)-based decision support system is developed and analysed for this purpose. The study highlights the scenarios that will help hospital administrators to redistribute caseloads among admitting clinicians with a focus on multiple diagnostic-related groups (DRGs) as the means to improve the patient turnaround and hospital throughput without compromising quality patient care. DRGs are the best known classification system used in a casemix funding model. Casemix is a DRG-based government funding model for hospitals with a mix of performance measures aiming to reward initiatives that increase efficiencies in hospitals. The classification system groups inpatient stays into clinically meaningful categories of similar levels of complexity that consume similar amounts of resources. Policy explorations reveal various combinations of the dominant policies that hospital management can adopt. With the use of visual interfaces, executives can manipulate the DSS to test various scenarios. Experimental evidence based on focus groups demonstrated that it can enhance group learning processes and improve decision making. The findings are supported by other recent studies of CP implementation on various DRGs. These showed substantial reduction in length of stay, costs and resource utilization.

System dynamics modelling and simulation of collaborative requirements engineering

Requirements engineering is generally seen as a success-critical activity in the software development process. Within this context, the paper presents selected aspects of the System Dynamics modelling and simulation of the EasyWinWin requirements negotiation methodology. EasyWinWin approaches requirements definition as a learning rather than a gathering activity and aims at fostering stakeholder co-operation and involvement. It is based on the WinWin requirements negotiation model and provides a set of collaborative techniques and tools to enable stakeholder interaction. The major goal behind the modelling and simulation effort is to assess the issues associated with the social and behavioural aspects of the EasyWinWin process and to explore how these issues affect the overall outcome of the process. In this paper, we introduce the EasyWinWin process and describe its major activities. We present the overall System Dynamics-based simulation model of EasyWinWin and provide details and results of the requirements elicitation component of the model. Finally, we will discuss model validation and calibration and summarize conclusions and insights obtained. An outlook on future work rounds out the paper.