Simulating the Production Process

in PIMco. Gen-Set Factory

ENMG 622
Prof. Bacel Maddah
Simulating the Production Process
in PIMco. Gen-Set Factory

Abstract
Model Description: The model in this project is that of
a manufacturing company based in Lebanon. I
reproduced the production line in a way very close to
reality, and modeled all the daily operations inside the
company. The resulting model contains 10 create
modules, 41 processes, 1 decision module, and 1 dispose
module. Each type of product manufactured by the
company has its own create module and four different
processes. All products however share the 4 existing
resources. There is also a quality control process and a
rework process shared by all types of products.
The aim of this project is to minimize the cost by
determining the ideal number of workers in each section
of the company. In addition, if we do not finish an item
within the required deadline, we would have to work
overtime which costs a lot of money.
Results and Findings: After several simulations and
changing the number of available resources (more than
10 different arrangements), I came to the conclusion
than we need 4 Assembly Workers, 5 Electricians, 6 Paint
Specialists, and 6 Finishing Workers.

Significance: The above results determine precisely the

number of workers needed in each section, which would
affect the recruiting policy at the company in the future.
The model can also be used to predict the amount of
extra labor needed in case of an increase in demand.

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Simulating the Production Process
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Introduction
I work in a power engineering company specialized in
manufacturing generator sets. The company is name Power
and Industrial Machinery Company, or PIMco. for short. We
are responsible for assembling engines and alternators, and
providing a suitable control system for the customer.
In our company, there are many departments, and each
department is responsible for some task(s) during the
production process. We keep a log of all orders performed
and the delivery times. Each factory aims at profit, which
comes from selling the product it makes, and at the same
time decreasing the operational costs. I will try in this project
to determine the optimal number of workers in each
department in order to keep the production process flowing,
while decreasing the cost.

Problem Statement
Orders arrive to our company based on the time in which
the order is confirmed, so we can get multiple orders each
day or hour. When the factory manager receives an order, he
then distributes it to the related departments, which start
working on the order if they have nothing in hand. Else, it
will be delayed until the job in hand is finished. Below is a
diagram on how the work is done is sequence at PIMco.

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 Simulating the Production Process
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Paint Work Department Assembling Department

Electrical Department

New Order

Quality Control Department

Finishing Department Rework Department

Delivery

Input Data
There are many sources of randomness in this project.
We begin with the arrival of orders, which is a random
process; also, the time taken in each department is another
random process. I used some approximations and
determined the following distributions for each type of
generators.
Genset Arrival Assembly Electric Paint Finishing
Type Rate
Distributi Distributio Distributi # of Distributi # of Distributi # of
on n on worker on worker on worker
s s s
10 KW EXPO(4) U(0.5,1) T(0.5,1,1 1 U(1,2) 1 U(1,1.5) 1
.5)
20 KW EXPO(2) U(0.5,1.5) T(0.5,1,1 1 U(1,2) 1 U(1,1.5) 1
.5)
50 KW EXPO(3) U(1,1.5) T(0.5,1,1 1 U(1,2) 1 U(1.5,2) 2
.5)
100 EXPO(4.5 U(1,1.5) T(0.5,1,1 1 U(2,3) 1 U(1.5,2) 2
KW ) .5)
300 EXPO(5) U(2,3) T(2,3,4) 1 U(2.5,3) 2 U(2,3) 2
KW
500 EXPO(13) U(2.5,3.5) T(3,4,6) 1 U(3,5) 2 U(2.5,4) 2
KW
800 EXPO(38) U(3,5) T(3,4,6) 1 U(5,9) 2 U(2.5,4) 2
KW

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 Simulating the Production Process
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1000 EXPO(65) U(6,8) T(6,7,10) 2 U(5,7) 3 U(4,6) 3

KW
1500 EXPO(85) U(8,10) T(7,9,10) 2 U(7,9) 3 U(5,6.5) 3
KW
2000 EXPO(12 U(9,12) T(8,10,1 3 U(9,14) 3 U(7,9) 3
KW 0) 3)

These distributions took a lot of time and effort to

produce. I had to collect specific data from the heads of each
department and model them into the above distributions.
They may not be perfect distributions, but they are very
close to reality.

Assumptions
The assumptions taken in this project are the following:

Orders arrive as single (No multiple Gen-Set

Orders)
Workers work for 8 hours each day from 8 am to 4
pm with 2 30 min breaks at 9:30 and 1:30
Items that fail quality check will re-perform the
test again until they pass
Each Gen-Set type has to be finished by the
number of days in the below table, or the
reputation of the company would be damaged. In
order to avoid this damage, every extra hour from
this deadline will be considered as overtime, and
will be charged more:

Gen-Set Expected time to

Type finish
10 KW 1 day
20 KW 1 day

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50 KW 2 days
100 KW 2 days
300 KW 2 days
500 KW 3 days
800 KW 3 days
1000 KW 5 days
1500 KW 6 days
2000 KW 7 days

Resulting Model
Below is a snapshot of the resulting module in Arena:

The model is big, so the snapshot might not be enough,

but the first block is the create block for each type of Gen-
Set. The second horizontal block is the Assembly block also
for each type, the third is the electrical, forth is the paint,
fifth is the finishing, then all processes go to the quality
control section. The ones that pass are delivered to the
client, while the ones that do not are sent back to the
Rework section, where an electrician and a finishing worker

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Simulating the Production Process
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fix the problems with a U(1,2) distribution for processing

time.

Objective and Justification

The objective of this project is to decrease the cost of
production. This can be done by decreasing the number of
workers while maintaining minimal overtime cost.

As a company aiming for profit, this is the best

objective we should aim at. In addition, this model will help
us forecast the number of workers required in case the is an
increase in demand.

Initial Simulation
We start the simulation with 5 workers in each section
and we simulate the system for 8000 hours. The table below
shows the time each entity spends in the system, and beside
it is the expected time in hours, and the time in overtime.

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Total Time Expected Time in

Type
in System Time Overtime
10 KW 16.8 8 8.8
20 KW 17.01 8 9.01
50 KW 29.48 16 13.48
100 KW 29.69 16 13.69
300 KW 42.77 16 26.77
500 KW 44.52 24 20.52
800 KW 49.27 24 25.27
1000 KW 105.08 40 60.08
1500 KW 107.85 48 59.85
2000 KW 113.29 56 67.29

It is clear that the time taken to produce each type is

very high, and the overtime is a lot and cannot be achieved.
The maximum amount of overtime is 4 hours per each day of
work, but some of the above types require overtime of more
than 8 hours. Clearly, this model is not acceptable and we
should check for a better model.
Another thing we will look at is the utilization of
resources, which are shown in, the below table:

Utilizati
Resource
on
Assembly
0.4608
Worker
Electrician 0.6054
Finishing
0.9762
Worker
Paint Specialist 0.9425

It is clear that the Assembly workers and the

Electricians are under-utilized, while the Finishing Workers
and Paint Specialists are over utilized.
Therefore, we should look into these statistics when choosing
to alter the resources.
Validation and Verification
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Simulating the Production Process
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The system is initially simulated for 8000 hours so we

can predict the number of entities entering the system
during this time in order to verify the entry distributions:

Type Expected # of Actual # of

Entries Entries
10 KW 2000 1968
20 KW 4000 3999
50 KW 2000 2035
100 KW 1777 1819
300 KW 1333 1324
500 KW 615 570
800 KW 210 192
1000 KW 123 107
1500 KW 94 87
2000 KW 66 70

It is clear to see that number of entries is very close to

the expected, which adds validity to the simulation results.
However, some entries are scarce, so there is a need to
increase the replication length.

Warm up Period and Length of

Runs
I chose a warm up period of 500 hours, which is more
than enough for the exponential functions to take shape and
stabilize near the expected values. The length of runs is also
increased to 15000 hours, which is equivalent to 5 years,
which is a very good number. We will also make 5 runs in
order to make the simulation more valid.

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Simulating the Production Process
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Model Results
We start working on the model by changing the number
of workers in each department. We will also implement the
warm up period and the number of runs. We noticed earlier
that the Assembly Workers and Electricians must be
decreased, while the Paint Specialists and Finishing Workers
need to be increased, so we will implement a new model
with 3 Assembly Workers, 4 Electricians, 6 Paint Specialists,
and 6 Finishing Workers. The results of the simulation over 5
runs show a huge improvement in the time each entity
spends in the system. The results are shown in the below
table:

Total Time Expected Time in

Type
in System Time Overtime
10 KW 10.5 8 2.5
20 KW 10.77 8 2.77
50 KW 13.28 16 0
100 KW 14.41 16 0
300 KW 20.52 16 4.52
500 KW 24.12 24 0.12
800 KW 27.53 24 3.53
1000 KW 42.33 40 2.33
1500 KW 46.55 48 0
2000 KW 58.28 56 2.28

It is amazing how much time we saved by just adding 1

worker in the Paint and Finishing Departments. However, we
will still look to decrease the number of overtime hours per
set. The statistics also still show that the resources are being
utilized at 80%:

Resource Utilizati

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Simulating the Production Process
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on
Assembly
0.7855
Worker
Electrician 0.7841
Finishing
0.8330
Worker
Paint Specialist 0.8149

We look at the queues and notice that the queues for

Assembly Workers and Electricians have increased
significantly, therefore we add one worker to each of the
mentioned sections, meaning that the system would be 4-5-
6-6 respectively.

The resulting system is also a huge improvement on the

existing one:

Total Time Expected Time in

Type
in System Time Overtime
10 KW 7.3 8 0
20 KW 7.6 8 0
50 KW 9.73 16 0
100 KW 10.60 16 0
300 KW 16.84 16 0.84
500 KW 20.39 24 0
800 KW 23.72 24 0
1000 KW 37.96 40 0
1500 KW 43.03 48 0
2000 KW 51.49 56 0

We notice that there is approximately no time spent in

overtime, and the utilization of resources is much better:

Utilizati
Resource
on
Assembly
0.5842
Worker
Electrician 0.6028
Finishing 0.8266

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Worker
Paint Specialist 0.8053

If we add another worker to each section of the

Finishing and Paint Departments, we will decrease their
utilization to 0.7 and 0.68 respectively, but that would be
overkill.
Therefore, the above result seems to be the best in
terms of total time in system, time in queues, and resource
utilization.

Conclusions and
Recommendations
After analyzing the model and manipulating the
resources, we concluded that we need 4 Assembly Workers,
5 Electricians, 6 Paint Specialists, and 6 Finishing Workers.
This conclusion should be carried to the upper management
in order to inform them about these findings. Currently, there
are 5 Assembly Workers, 6 Electricians, 5 Paint Specialists,
and 5 Finishing Workers in the company. When there are
many orders at the same time, I observed that the 2
departments that work overtime the most are the paint and
finishing departments, which is a further proof that these
departments need more workers as shown by the model.
The recommendations to the management would be to
decrease the number of assembly workers and electricians,
and reallocate the resources to the other two sections in
need.

Possible Extensions

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We might use this model as stated before in order to

predict the effect of increased or decreased demand on the
utilization of resources. Furthermore, we can enhance this
project by taking multiple entity orders and accounting for
other delays in the production. Here we assumed that all the
material is available in stock, which is definitely not the case,
and sometimes there are long lead times before we can get
the required material and modeling this would help make
this model more realistic.

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