Case studies

CNH Industrial is a global leader in capital goods. It is financially controlled by the Italian investment company Exor and is comprised of 12 brands, including Case, New Holland, and Iveco. Through its brands, CNHi designs, produces, and sells a wide range of agricultural, industrial, and commercial vehicles and powertrains. CNH Industrial identified maintenance processes as a promising area to start applying new Industry 4.0 technologies. In the automotive and related industries, downtime costs can be large. As such, improving maintenance in order to reduce downtime can deliver significant success.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was the world’s sixth largest pharmaceutical company in 2014. The company was launching a new vaccine product on a new market that needed a distribution network different from what they had before. Therefore, the company needed to design a new supply chain and align manufacturing processes with it.

CSX is a US railroad company that operates about 21,000 route miles (34,000 km). AnyLogic allows the railroad industry users to simulate line-of-road, terminal, and yard problems. The following three projects, completed by CSX in 2014, covered a variety of tasks that were solved using AnyLogic software.

The County of Stockholm (Sweden), like any country or region, experiences a continuous need to handle the healthcare necessities of various patient groups. Each group can be seen as a subpopulation, with its own distinctive traits, characteristics, and challenges. The discussed simulation project focused on the dialysis patients, a group who needs to visit caregiving facilities frequently.

A major US airline wanted to explore several options to generate new profits through ancillary products or changes to existing policies. Although the revenue generation through charging additional fees was apparent in the short term, prior to implementing a policy change, the airline opted to evaluate the long term perceived impact on brand equity, market share and customer loyalty.

One of the largest resource companies in the world, with over $80 billion in sales, decided to enter a new market. It was planning to build a new potash mine and export 90% of production. They wanted to design a reliable supply chain, with high speed replenishment, and the ability to recover, or even benefit, from disasters, both natural and man-made. Amalgama and Goldratt were contracted to design the potash mining operations and a full supply chain for outbound logistics.

Cardinal Health, a billion dollar pharmaceutical distribution and logistics firm, manages multiple products from brand name pharmaceuticals and generic drugs to over the counter drugs, health & beauty items and their own private label. They face a multitude of typical distribution warehouse challenges that are further complicated by the nature of pharmaceutical products. Brian Heath, Director of Advanced Analytics at Cardinal Health, and an experienced user of AnyLogic software, employed agent based modeling to solve various business problems, saving Cardinal Health over $3 Million annually.

One of the largest oil and gas pipeline operators in North America was delivering oil to a client that was not always able to accept the incoming batches. The operator was challenged to quantify the system impacts of deferred downstream deliveries. They also needed to determine whether the existing tankage at upstream oil terminals would be adequate to store the deferred batches.

The military aircraft maintenance turnaround process (the in-between time when the aircraft touches down, is refueled, rearmed, and inspected, in order to be released) is complex and, being fairly time-consuming, includes multiple interactions and parallel workflows. Engineers from Lockheed Martin, one of the largest companies in the aerospace, defense, security, and technologies industry, used AnyLogic simulation modeling to improve decision making in the entire military airplane turnaround process and evaluate the impact of process changes on turnaround time.

In 2012, GE opened a new battery manufacturing plant in conjunction with the launch of an innovative energy storage business. GE’s exciting opportunity brought on many new challenges, such as increasing production throughput and yield under evolving processes and uncertainties, and reducing manufacturing costs in order to gain market share. The GE Global Research Center sought out a powerful and flexible tool to analyze, not just the specific process, but the manufacturing system as a whole.