Degree
Master of Business Administration
Faculty / School
Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)
Advisor
Dr. Rameez Khalid, Assistant Professor, Department of Management
Committee Member 1
Dr. Rameez Khalid, Academic Director Post Graduate Diploma – Supply Chain Management, Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi
Project Type
MBA Research Project
Keywords
https://ir.iba.edu.pk/do/search/?q=Simulation&start=0&context=8598587&facet=">Simulation, Decision making, Supply chain management, Overland Express Logistics, Automated system
Abstract / Summary
The purpose of the project is to introduce Modelling and Simulation in the Pakistani industries to ease the decision making of the management. The management sometime are in a fix for a feasible solution for their company and are not able to develop their future strategies keeping in mind the fluctuation in supply and demand. For this purpose, three industries were selected i.e. Blood bank, Logistics company and a manufacturing company and Witness Simulation Software was selected for modelling and simulation. Case study method was used to conduct this research in which in-depth interviews were conducted to understand the process of the companies so that As-Is scenario could be modelled on the witness software. Once the As-Is scenario was validated by the data provided by the companies and all the stakeholders, what-if scenario was developed to get the feasible solution for the company in terms of time and cost.
The research was conducted for the first time by six MBA students studying IBA University under the supervision of the PGD Director Professor Dr. Rameez Khalid. The research consists of three phases in which first phase was to learn the software, second phase was to understand the process and the third phase was to develop As-Is and What if scenarios on Witness Software to get the right possible solutions for the companies. The project took almost 12 months to complete.
The XYZ Hospital wanted to go for the expansion plan in different parts of the Sindh as they have already developed facilities in Jamshoro, Thatta, Hyderabad and Badin. The existing facilities were modelled on the Witness Software which could help in decision making for the future expansion. It was found that all the three facilities including Hyderabad, Jamshoro and Badin has the more stock of blood then the demand. It was concluded that the blood collection point at Hyderabad and Jamshoro was enough to cater the demand at these locations and there was no need to set up another at Badin. It was also recommended that a product finalization takes place at Hyderabad location and only testing could be completed at Regional Centre Jamshoro which could save the logistics cost.
ABC company management wanted to identify the bottlenecks in their Overland Express Logistics process and recommendations to reduce them to make the whole process efficient. For this purpose, the whole process of OLE operation was modelled on the witness software taking into consideration only one client and As-Is scenario was developed. The model was analyzed, and it was found that outbound operation has the bottlenecks in the process while the labors were also under-utilized. An automated system that was already used by a multinational company was recommended for the inbound as well as outbound operations and what-if scenario was developed. The system not only saved almost Rs. 13,000 per month for the company but also saved the time of the management for incorporating contractual labors everyday due to fluctuation in demand. The automated system can also reduce the manual handling of the shipment while also decrease the delivery time to the customers.
The PQR company has entered the master process market recently and wanted to make their existing capacity better and does not wanted to make capital investments to increase their capacity. For this purpose, their process was modelled on the witness software and after validation what if scenarios were developed. It was found that the throughput of the system was overall improved by 5.5% by reducing the maximum cleaning time to 360 minutes from 500 minutes.
It is recommended to use the licensed version of the software for future study as student version has the limitation on the number of elements due to which the whole processes were not analyzed in detail. The students can use the existing models for the future research and can tap the other processes of the industry in detail. Similarly, modelling and simulation could be introduced to more industries in future which could help them in decision making which was the core purpose of the project.
Recommended Citation
Farrukh, A., Ikram, H., Ali, H. M., Arshad, M. H., Sabir, M. O., & Aftab, S. (2020). Application of witness simulation software: cases from supply chain in Pakistani industries (Unpublished graduate research project). Institute of Business Administration, Pakistan. Retrieved from https://ir.iba.edu.pk/research-projects-mba/10
