Material Flow Planning in Multimodal Manufacturing Systems by Computer Simulation

The linkage of production processes in manufacturing systems is a major issue affecting system's performance. Such linkage is defined by the way material and information flows are established. A control policy in manufacturing systems imposes a particular pattern of information flow on the factory. Similarly, a specific implementation of transportation policies defines a pattern of material flow between two uncoupled processes. This paper studies the condition of material flow in KSC. Furthermore, through simulation, proper flow of material with the aim of achieving Company's development plan as well as increasing the production capacity from 2.1 to 4.2 million tons per year has been provided. For this, the exchanges among different units and various modes for transporting material among these units have been studied. Considering the hourly distribution of materials and the share of railway and road network in the material flow, four scenarios have been proposed. In each scenario various solutions for improving the condition of material flow have been studied.