Many comnpanies use the railways to deliver product. This talk will describe a simulation model that has been built to represent a newly-established arrangement with CN Rail to deliver product to a terminal on the Husky Oil heavy oil pipeline. Because it is critical that the product be continuously available to the pipeline, the model is an important tool for addressing questions such as:
The talk will include details of the construction of the model, and how some of the complexities of the real world were incorporated. For example, return trip times to supply sources are stochastic, with a distribution that depends not only on the supply source (i.e., how distant it is), but also on the day of the week when the railcar is sent to that source.
The model was built using a software package called I-Think. This program is spe cifically designed for modeling system dynamics, but is easily adapted to discrete simulations such as this. The model representation is very graphic, and can be animated to dynamically show the changes in system state as the model runs. This explains, at least in part, its quick acceptance by Husky management.