DYNA JOURNAL ENGINEERING

Key words:

Transporte combinado, simulación de terminales, mejora de procesos, combined transport, terminal simulation, process improvement.

Article type:

ARTICULO DE INVESTIGACION / RESEARCH ARTICLE

Section:

RESEARCH ARTICLES

ABSTRACT
Simulation is frequently used to evaluate new scenarios to improve the present operation of a combined transportation terminal. This project llustrates how simulation may be used to generate new alternative configurations in the redesign process of a terminal (changing the number of cranes, working shifts…). This is an iterative process, where the results obtained for a certain configuration are used as an input for the generation of new promising configuration alternatives. A simulation model, developed in Witness® commercial software, is presented to illustrate the alternative generation rocess. The model represents the initial configuration of a rail-road terminal. Terminal performance is assessed and based on this information and the
knowledge of the system internal causality, new promising configuration alternatives are defined and implemented. The results of these new
configurations may as well lead to new changes, reproducing once again the process.