Modeling and improvement of the integrated business and production processes by fuzzy simulation

• Authors: A. Azadeh;M. Haghnevis;Y. Khodadadegan;M. Madadi
• Venue: SpringSim '09 Proceedings of the 2009 Spring Simulation Multiconference
• Year: 2009

The objective of this study is to model and improve the performance of the integrated information, business and production process of a powder coating manufacturing by fuzzy simulation. In real situations particularly in business processes, the probability distributions are not known or imprecise and conventional modeling approaches may be questionable. Fuzzy simulation is capable of modeling uncertainties and vagueness. The results of fuzzy simulation approach are compared with conventional simulation by t-test. It is shown the performance of the actual system is modeled and improved by the integrated fuzzy simulation approach of this study. Hence, the results are more reliable than conventional simulation. The integrated approach of this study is capable of evaluating customer lead-times in six dimensions. Furthermore, the integrated fuzzy simulation approach considers conventional customer lead-time (from when the customer places an order) in addition to five other customer indices. This is the first study to model and improve the integrated information, business and production process by fuzzy simulation. The integrated approach of this study identifies major bottlenecks of production process and business process concurrently. It also produces several dimensions of customer satisfactions, allows the effects of business process re-engineering and information technology to be evaluated before actual implementation. In addition, by integrated modeling of this study the hidden and concurrent effect of business and production processes are identified and improved via fuzzy simulation.