Companies in the mining and energy sectors face many of the same supply chain challenges of other industries. Transportation services, warehouse management, and global services are intertwined in moving equipment and supplies to the work site and shipping cargo to customers. These challenges make it difficult to predict the likely system impact of local decisions or how changes in one part of the system cause undesirable effects to other divisions.
In 2013, the largest mineral resources company contracted Goldratt Research Labs and Amalgama to develop a simulation tool that would allow for better decision-making on a day-to-day and long term basis. The project requirements included;
- A decision support tool for testing the impact of local changes on the total supply chain performance to better understanding the trade-offs, and to perform direct comparisons of different operating strategies.
- An education tool for their mining, supply chain, and marketing management teams around the world.
- A platform for testing which strategies and tactics will best support their productivity drive within each link of the supply chain without it resulting in local optimization.
Read the case study
presented at the 2015 AnyLogic Conference and find out why Goldratt Research Labs and Amalgama advocate for organizations to use dynamic simulation models as part of their day-to-day decision making and as educational tools to help managers understand the frequently hidden underlying dynamics of their supply chains.
