A Heuristics and Discrete Event Simulation for Optimized Layout Design in Agricultural Machinery Maintenance - A Case Study of Wereta International Business Plc.
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Date
2024-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Agricultural machineries play a vital role in agricultural processes and help in the production of food and non-food items. The efficient layout of agricultural machinery maintenance facilities is crucial for minimizing process times and maximizing throughput. This paper deals with the development and optimization of an agricultural machinery maintenance facility using discrete event simulation considering Wereta International Business Plc.’s agricultural machinery maintenance facility layout as a case. The development of the facility layout is done in a way that introduces flexibility of departments and also that combines the different services given in the facility, maintenance, training (customer & staff) and pre-delivery inspection processes.
The research tries to construct a new facility layout that decreases the travel distance, considers the relationship between departments using the CORELAP facility layout construction method. The newly constructed facility layout has been optimized using facility layout improvement technique, CRAFT (excel add-in) to further enhance the optimality of the facility layout by enhancing the material flow between departments to minimize the material handling cost.
Finally, an improved facility layout, with 15 departments that include main and supporting facilities and also combines the services and training facilities is developed. The proposed facility layout reduces that has been constructed from scratch and then optimized decreases the distance traveled between departments by 2,015.11 meter (a reduction of 33.66%) and the total monthly material handling cost by 531,093.14 Birr per month (a reduction of 86.85%). The entity output of the existing system is 40 units and for the proposed layout, the entity output is 67, an increase by 67.50%. Also, the system output from the existing simulation model is 125.30 units and the proposed layout simulation modeling system output increased by 58.85% to 199.04 units.
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Keywords
Agricultural Machinery, Maintenance Facility Layout, Layout Optimization, Discrete Event Simulation