Using Simulation-Based Optimization to Improve Performance At a Tire Manufacturing Company

What is it about?

In this paper, a simulation optimization-based decision support tool has been developed to study the capacity enhancement scenarios in a tire manufacturing company located in Iran. This company is experiencing challenges in synchronizing production output with customer demand causing an unbalanced work-in-process (WIP) inventory distribution throughout the tire manufacturing process. However, a new opportunity to increase the supplying of raw materials by fifty percent and increase the expected growth in market demand, necessitate this study of the current company situation. This research supported by the company, is to analyze whether the ongoing production logistics system can respond to the increased market demand, considering the raw material expansion. Implementation of a proposed hybrid push/pull production control strategy, together with the facility capacity enhancement options in bottleneck stations and/or heterogeneous lines within the plant, are investigated by the proposed simulation optimization methodology.

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Why is it important?

Developing a step-by-step simulation optimization methodology, customized with company problems, together with the inventive simulation modeling approach is a duple, which defines the contribution of this work through the literature. In this paper, a simulation-based optimization tool is developed, to support decisions about capacity enhancement and challenges in synchronizing production output with customer demand.