In new or expanding competitive industries, there is often the need to upgrade, expand or re-locate facilities.
Computer simulation provides an excellent tool for decision making in facilities planning exercises.
It allows facilities to be planned which have already been tested for their efficiency, ensuring they will deliver a high level of customer service, before they are built. They were planning to expand production, by building a new plant, and wished to evaluate the consequences of various alternative sites. They also needed to expand operations at another plant and so wanted to determine optimum supply amounts and optimum capacities of various facilities of the plant. A model of the production and distribution of the product which allowed ICI to evaluate three alternative locations for the new manufacturing facility. A model of production and distribution of another product, to evaluate storage options, capacities at various stages and supply amounts of raw materials at the existing plant.