A Simulation study of sea transport based fertilizer product considering disruptive supply and congestion problems

Abstract

Every company desires to have an ideal delivery system with no disruption and no downtime. In reality, disruption events cannot be avoided, especially when delivering products using maritime transportation. Such unwanted and uncontrolled events can include sudden factory downtime, vessel breakdown, jetty congestion at a port, and more. Due to the serious consequences, disruption needs to be subjected to considerable scrutiny because it may influence the performance of the company. Many studies have been undertaken regarding inventory routing problems in the maritime area. However, it is very rare that these studies have included disruption events in their model. This research examines supply and transportation disruptions and also develops several scenarios to recover from disruptions so as to increase the system performance. The method used to model this problem is a discrete event simulation, because this tool is capable of handling complex systems. The best alternatives were chosen by finding a compromise or tradeoff between the key performance indicators, specifically the service level and the cost of achieving the goals. Two parameters were tested in the sensitivity analysis to understand the behavior and how sensitive these parameters are to the performance criteria. Keywords: Disruption Management, Inventory Routing Problem, Maritime Transportation, Discrete Event Simulation