Case studies

A global FMCG manufacturing leader optimized its food product inventory management while ensuring maximum service level and minimizing product quality deterioration. For this task, consultants from ITC Infotech built a simulation-based model of the FMCG company’s multi-echelon distribution network to find interdependencies between product quality deterioration, fill rates, and the shelf-life factor that helps inventory planning. As a result, the business would be able to decide how much product should be manufactured and make informed decisions.

The construction industry has a challenge to build more energy-efficient, low-carbon and affordable products. In order to do that, new technologies must be implemented, in particular using off-site construction. Here, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, working with the US Department of Energy created a simulation model to try to understand if off-site construction could lead to the desired production outcomes.

Manufacturing companies face many challenges in the world today including globalization and changes in consumer demand. To overcome these obstacles, companies can either keep extra capacity or engage in resource sharing in order to utilize their resources in a more productive way.

Perfection Pet Foods is a US manufacturer of extruded pet food, with a focus on ultra-premium products for dogs and cats. For three consecutive years, demand for the company’s products increased annually by approximately 35%, while demand profiles changed as people switched their preferences from big dogs to smaller ones. This was the reason the company decided to optimize their production line and adjust it to the current demand.

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica is an international specialist in the field of digital system integration. The company has more than 11,000 employees in more than 50 offices around the world. One of its flagship projects is an ecosystem of platforms that enable other technologies to interact with each other – exchanging value, digitizing processes, developing digital services, and creating value for users, especially through the leverage of 8D.

A manufacturing performance evaluation tool for optimizing flexible manufacturing system design and operation. Case study of how MCM worked with Engineering Group to capture systems expertise for a powerful manufacturing performance evaluation tool.

A biotech startup, providing experimental personalized medical treatment, wanted to conduct data-driven pharmaceutical manufacturing simulation to optimize decision-making processes when delivering new products. These products were undergoing clinical trials, and the manufacturing processes remained unclear while US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval was pending. The company was short of resources, but it was crucial to produce its products as fast as possible and without failures.

Centrotherm Photovoltaics AG is a global supplier of technology and equipment for the photovoltaics, semiconductor, and microelectronics industries. The company needed to identify the best-automated production line and factory configuration to minimize costs and maximize throughput and reliability.

Bryden Wood, in collaboration with Tata Steel and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, developed a simulation model of the factory system. Using simulation, Bryden Wood was able to test a few different scenarios. They excluded transport times to get a ‘best case’ boundary output. Also, the developers included and excluded process times and changed the production schedule, which had an impact on the sizing of different factory areas.

The cladding leak detection shop is part of an automated line of fuel assembly production. Leak control is based on heating the fuel element groups. While warming up, defective units eject the control gas, which is detected by a leak locator. The defected group is divided into two parts. Each part is screened in the same way until the leaking fuel element is found. The model, built in AnyLogic, simulates two algorithms of leak detection shop operation.