Academic articles

Simulating Backfill Operations for Underground Mining


This article focuses on the simulation model that was developed for Sibanye-Stillwater’s underground platinum mining operations in Nye, MT. The model was designed to help the mining company understand how bottlenecks move through their operations, to help identify which resources are constraining underground mining production increases, and to understand where capital investments are needed in backfill operations.

Using Simulation to Analyze the Predictive Maintenance Technique and its Optimization Potential


The Predictive Maintenance technique offers a possibility to improve productivity in semiconductor manufacturing. Current research on Predictive Maintenance mainly focuses on its technical implementation. By applying discrete-event simulation, the research team provide results on how maintenance strategies can help optimize machine operations, and how the technique contributes to an overall improvement of productivity in wafer fabrication.

Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach for Inventory Policy Tested in Simulation Environment


In this work, the researchers undertake a root-cause enabling Vendor Managed Inventory performance measurement approach to assign responsibilities for poor performance. Additionally, the work proposes a solution methodology based on reinforcement learning for determining optimal replenishment policy in a VMI setting. Using a simulation model as a training environment, different demand scenarios are generated based on real data from Infineon Technologies AG and compared based on key performance indicators.

Simulation-Based Scheduling and Planning Approach to Job-Shop Production System


This paper proposes a simulation-based decentralized planning and scheduling approach to improve the performances of a job-shop production system, compliant with a semi-heterarchical Industry 4.0 architecture. To this extent, to face the increasing complexity of such a scenario, a parametric simulation model able to represent a wide number of job-shop systems is introduced.

Planning and Management of Hospitals and Other Healthcare Facilities: Layout Comparison


Factors including hospital space layout, patient behavior, patient flow, and medical procedures interact and relate to each other, and ultimately affect efficiency and performance of healthcare facilities. And hospital layout planning can’t ignore such interdependencies.

This research integrates discrete event simulation (DES) and agent-based simulation (ABS) to help managers examine, plan, and compare different spatial design schemes through the modeling of patient behavior, patient flow, and the establishment of evaluation indexes.