SIMIO SIMULATION PROJECT

Team Name: SIMBIT

Piyush Ambekar (1001164020)Japan Shah (1001154714)Vishrut Mehta (1001160569)

Problem statement and objectiveso Problem statement : • New World Energy is planning the creation of a new 1.0 Megawatt/Month photovoltaic (PV) panel production facility in Akureyri Iceland.

Our consulting firm , Technology Exporters U.S.A. , has been hired by New World Energy’s board to assist in the planning and design of the proposed 1.0 Megawatt/month PV panel production facility. For this study it is assumed that the average cell can produce 1.335 Watts of power. The baseline system produces 78-600 kg Ignots and 19-400 kg Ignots per year. We have to build the baseline model and do a design experiment to determine what additional resources and capital expenditures are required to increase production rate in the project time span of 10 months.

o Objectives :• Generate a process plan , based on the information provided.• Decide how much capital investment will NWE have to make to develop a pilot production facility in Akureyri Iceland.• Find out NEW’s total capital investment for the final production facility that is capable of producing the targeted 1.0 Megawatt/month

production rate.• After the facility is up and running , the NWE board will allocate a maximum of $3,50,000/month in new capital investment. Based on

this funding profile , our objective is decide that if 10 month funding plant providing an additional $35,00,000 be sufficient to reach the 1.0 Megawatt/month production rate.

• Decide the staffing requirements for the pilot production facility.• Decide shift pattern and staffing levels to run the Akureyri facility during each phase of the production expansion.

Process Flow

Mine Truck Vendor

Hopper 2 Size crucibles

5 Chemical processes Paint Booth

Drying process Bake in oven

Spray release agentGrade : A

CrucibleGrade : B

Packed Crucible

Furnace

400 kgsCooling station

Grade A Grade B Byproduct

Mine

Two production Processes

Hydraulic crushing station

Chunks sorting station

400 kg Ignot

The figure here shows the total process flow of the project. The major processes to be completed here are:

1. Raw silicon cleaning process under which we have to do 5 chemical processes.

2. Preparing the crucible.

3. Packing the crucible for purification and production.

4. Sending the cubicles to the furnace.

5. Separating the crucible into two categories after they come out of the cooling station.

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2

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Process Timelines/logic and Assumptions• As we had to do 5 chemical process in the “Raw Silicon Process” , we have used the task

sequence to merge the processes into a single process and each were assigned the necessary time of 5 mins to complete the process.

• For making a total of 600-kg crucible we take the A-grade material which is available with us and mixed with B-Grade material or raw silicon ore , whichever is available first. In the mixture we use 80-kg of A-grade material and 520-kg of B-grade material or raw silicon ore. To develop a logic in selecting the material from B-grade or raw silicon ore , we have used the priority logic. In which the B-grade material is given the first priority and the raw silicon ore is given the second priority and also when there is scarcity of the B-Grade material , we will take raw silicon ore into the mixture.

• For making a 400-kg crucible , we will use 400-kg of A-grade material only.• The 600-kg and 400-kg crucibles are coming into the cooling station. After the process we need

to separate these crucibles and send them to their assigned next stations. To separate these crucibles , we have used the “add-on process” logic in which we have put “decide” and “transfer” process to separate the crucibles. If the incoming crucible is of 600-kg we send it to the crushing buffer for further process and if the incoming crucible is of 400-kg , we send it to the ignot buffer.

In this model , we have made some assumptions according to the given instruction. The assumptions are:

• In this model , we have assumed that 1 entity = 1 kg of material.• The crucible of both sizes will be available to the NWE facility as needed.• We have assumed that the 800-kg of A-grade material is already available at the facility when operation of

filling the crucible first begin.

Team Conclusion:

From the analysis we performed , we can conclude that increasing the production of A-grade material will eventually increase the overall productivity of the facility.To prepare the 400-kg ingots , we need only A-grade material. Since we will increase the productivity of the A-grade material , we can directly increase the number of ingots prepared of 400-kg crucible.

For filling the purification crucible , we take 80-kg of A-grade material and 520-kg of B-grade material and/or raw silicon ore. Here we assume that we have 800-kg A-grade material readily available at the facility while the operations first begin. We need a resource of A-grade material.The capacity of the storage of material bin is 2000-kg. If this capacity is increased , we can increase the overall production of 400-kg ingots.

We recommend that instead of having 800-kg A-grade material readily available at the facility , increase the quantity of the material which is already available. Also we can increase the capacity of material storage bin or we can add another bin in which we can store the incoming material.

The investment cost for a 2000-kg material bin is $150k.

Baseline Model ResultsThese results are obtained while running the facility for 8 weeks.

Number of crucibles produced for600-kg are 335 and for 400-kg are109.

Number of 600-kg Ingots are 8 and number of 400-kg Ingots are 3.

Here the number exited from the GradeAbin is 2,644 but the number entered in the GradeAStorage is 2,122. Here the process is having a bottleneck because the capacity of the storage is 2000kg. The remaining quantity ( 522kg ) are not getting stored in the storage bin for A-grade material.

The table shows the key machine utilizations which are relevant to the material flow in the system.

The table shows the key resource utilization which are relevant to material flow.

Model Validation:

Model validation is required to see if the model which we made , is working according to the customer’s requirement and we are getting the expected results.

Here for validation , we were given that the baseline system production was stated up front at 78-600kg Ingots and 19-400 kg ingots. In our model , we found out that we could produce 8-600 kg Ingots and 3-400 kg Ingots in 8 weeks. If we extrapolate the results for 1 year (52 weeks) , we could produce 52-600 kg Ingots and 19-400 kg Ingots. As for further processes we only required 400-kg Ingots , we can say that our model results validates with the given baseline system production results considering the fact that all the equipment's were purchased in the time span of 10 months and given the money spending limit of 350k/month.

Before implementing the improvements

After implementing the improvements

Here , the to increase the productivity of the plant , we have added another A-grade material storage bin to the facility. By doing so , we are able to provide more A-grade material during the cycle of the process. After implementing this strategy , we found out that the number of ingots for 600-kg material increased from 8 to 9. Which is a 12.5% increment. And number of ingots for 400-kg material increased from 3 to 4. Which is a 33.33% increment.

After all the equipment were purchased and the facility was up and running , we had a total of $3,500,000 available with us. We managed to buy three additional equipment with it but it failed to improve any production.The candidate improvements that we assessed but did not improve production are:

1. Adding a silicon chunk sorting station to the facility.2. Adding crucible packing stations for 600-kg crucible as well as for 400-kg crucible.3. Add another furnace.

The silicon chunk sorting station had a cost of $50k. We ran the model , adding this station but it did not improve any productivity.We also tried adding an additional crucible packing stations for both 600-kg and 400-kg crucibles. The total cost of them were $200k. This method was also a failure in improving the production of the facility.

There is a process in which we have to apply the release agent on the 600kg purification crucible. The operator needed to fill the crucible with 80 kg of A-grade silicon and 520 kg of raw silicon ore and/or B-grade material. According to us , this was the hardest technical part . Because merging the two different crucible and selecting 520 kg crucible from raw silicon and/or B-grade material was a real challenge.We overcame this problem by brainstorming and taking into consideration different ideas and finally came to a common solution.

At the early stage , we were using complex logics for different processes. Later on we came to know that some of the processes can be merged together and we can use a single logic for all of them.

As a team , we decided to take one topic each time we met and come with some research on that topic and develop a logic for the process. Whenever we met , we brainstormed the ideas of all the group members and finally come to a solution and implemented it in the simio model. We went ahead following this steps for each process and each step of the project.

Piyush AmbekarJapan ShahVishrut Mehta