Case studies

Microsoft is one of the largest tech companies in the world, with sales revenue of over 90 billion US dollars. The company has over 30,000 products with a large variation in life cycles, more than 13 contract manufacturers, and 12 distribution centers. Many of its sales come from selling physical devices, and this exposes the company to an accompanying level of complexity and uncertainty. In 2015, Goldratt Research Labs was contracted by Microsoft to design, validate, pilot, and implement an end-to-end Supply Chain Management solution based on Theory of Constraints best practices.

Meta needed to properly design their new Hyperscale Data Centers in order to improve workflows, as well as analyze bottlenecks and throughput capability. In particular, they were concerned with how to optimize the receiving of racks. Using simulation, optimization, and a Monte Carlo experiment they were able to identify the exact requirements necessary to ensure this rack delivery workflow was carried out efficiently and effectively.

The Agent-based Turbine Operations & Maintenance (ATOM) model is a digital twin simulation model developed by decisionLab Ltd and Siemens. The digital twin emulates the global maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) operations of Siemens’ aero-derivative gas turbine division. Driven by live data already available within the supply chain, the model provides the capability to use sophisticated simulation and data-analytics methodologies to optimize the fleet operations of Siemens, enabling better data-driven decision-making to improve productivity and efficiency in customer operations and asset...

HAVI is a $5 billion global company and McDonald’s long-time supply chain and packaging partner. They provide services for supply chain management, packaging, logistics, and recycling and waste. When McDonald's wanted to build on the success of All-Day Breakfast and introduce additional menu items at 14,000 restaurants, they chose HAVI to complete the project.

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer by revenue, was looking for an automation technology that would help complete orders faster and at a lower cost in the company’s fast-growing online grocery business. They wanted to evaluate Alert Innovation’s Goods-to-Person (GTP) concept, Alphabot (an AGV or robot-based system), which could automate the grocery pickup process by using autonomous mobile carts capable of operating in all three dimensions within a multilevel storage structure.

One of Tata Steel's steel manufacturing units showed potential for increasing the overall unit throughput by optimizing the internal logistics systems. The opportunity was in improving crane and ladle handling by introducing optimized process flows and testing different layout configurations.

Vale, a Brazilian multinational corporation engaged in metals and mining, wanted to maximize the productivity of its open-pit coal mines in Moatize, Mozambique. To test different scenarios without disrupting the operations, the company opted for simulation modeling and contracted with Genoa, a decision support company specializing in optimization and simulation.

Domino’s is one of the leading pizza companies in the world. It has been experiencing huge growth and wanted to make the design of new stores simpler and more efficient, as well as improve labor scheduling. In order to do this, they decided to focus on building digital twins of their stores to test new concepts, store processes, and ideal layouts before they were implemented in the actual physical layouts of a store.

Automotive industry leaders use autonomous mobile robots (AMR) in their production facilities to improve productivity. In this case study, Tesla Material Flow Engineer and former BMW Group PhD Student and AMR researcher, Maximilian Selmair, describes standard industry practice when deploying large-scale transporter fleets and demonstrates how AnyLogic cloud-based simulation helps develop optimal task allocation algorithms.

The Airbus Group joined the European Union ARUM (Adaptive Production Management) project, which is focused on creating an IT solution for risk reduction, decision-making, and planning during new product ramp-ups. The project is aimed mainly at aircraft and shipbuilding industries. Simulation was chosen as a part of the ARUM solution, because it would allow the participants to reproduce the real production facility experience.