Name: RODRIGO MEIRELLES NASCIMENTO
Type: MSc dissertation
Publication date: 31/08/2016
Summary: Faced with the effects of seasonality on global market of metallic minerals, associated with its relevant logistics and production costs besides of variation of raw materials purchase prices for the steel industry, mining companies need to apply decision making, often in opposite direction of the growth. Arise as solutions of these difficulties some divestments, cost cutting, prioritizing activities and maximizing the
use of its assets that can be implemented with changes in facilities and processes. In this research, was applied an optimization approach in a supply chain simulation
model to get the best answers to support operating and strategic decisions making.
Specifically, were investigated the inventory work levels along the chain from which is obtained, after changes in resources and processes, a maximum coal input consumption per year for the production of iron ore pellets by pelletizing plants of a mining company. A simulation model of a real mining company, developed and validated in Arena® software from another previous study, was adopted as a case
study of this research and captures the complex nature of the system and an optimizer created in the add-in OptQuest® for Arena® performs the search for best solutions. The simulator is also used to generate performance results of the chain in optimized situations. Experimentation suggests that changes of capacity, changes im storage practices and variations in the capacities of processes impact in some cases and to a greater or lesser extent, input consumption. It also demonstrates the sensitivity of performance results in the supply chain when changes were applied.
Performance indicators show the evolution between the results of tested cases.
Keywords: Simulation optimization. Supply Chain. Inventory Management. Sensitivity of supply chain performance
