Feb 15, 2018
About the Customer
A top jet engine manufacturer is planning the redesign of one of their facilities from an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) plant to an MRO (Maintenance, Repair & Operations) plant. They had a team of subject matter experts from all over the company come in to determine the appropriate steps to redesign the facility. This redesign required many aspects of layout design, resource allocation, capacity planning, and throughput analysis in order to validate their plan.
About the Project
Engineering and Siemens were brought in to help their redesign leaders validate their design decisions. This would provide confidence for the customer that they could meet the demands of a future workload. Engineering utilized Plant Simulation to virtually simulate their process so that the customer could see their future layout now and run various scenarios to validate that their process will meet this future demand.
Engineering has finished virtually simulating the plant layout. With this layout complete, we have analyzed the minimum resources (workers, transportation, storage, fixtures) needed to attain their future workload goal. We looked at how much capacity their process could possibly handle. We also determined what their maximum throughput and WIP would look like during the entirety of the next year. All of these goals are summarized within charts, tables, and one big report. The simulation is even flexible enough that the customer can create new scenarios within their process and analyze the results.
Engineering is currently training their end users on the basics of Plant Simulation. The intent of the training is to get the customer comfortable not only with the software but with their simulation as well. This training will also give them the knowledge to adjust the simulation parameters and create new scenarios.
Engineering's Advantage
The customer has seen value in every aspect of the simulation. They have used Plant Simulation immediately as a validation tool for their future workload, their resource needs, and capacity studies. These validations are being incorporated into decisions that are being made today.
