Supply Chain Model Case Studies

Mineral Resources Ltd Pit to Port Supply Chain Model

Mineral Resources were rapidly building their iron ore operation in Onslow, Western Australia. Covering mining, haulage, port operations and shipping, InterDynamics was engaged to build a supply chain model of their operation that would challenge and confirm operating assumptions and test additional scenarios.

The system allowed Mineral Resources to test every facet of their supply chain from production rates, mine stockpiles, truck fleet and loading processes, port stockpile, transhipping and loading Cape size vessel at sea. Throughout the development we were able to incorporate additional processes and constraints such as maintenance, tracking fuel consumption and delays due to tides and wind.
The Mineral Resources team now has a model that can be used to test and analyse different operating strategies as they ramp up operation and plan into the future.

Pacific National Rail Terminal Planner

Pacific National were using Excel to test various yard operation plans for an intermodal terminal. Using an Excel timetable, they would manually draw shapes to show the occupancy of the yard which would take several hours per scenario. Additionally, if changes were required numerous other shapes would then have to be manually moved.

We developed The Terminal Operations Planner which greatly sped up the process to allow more scenarios to be created and tested. The Planner read the timetable from Excel including the TEU's and lifts required and had the ability to automatically assign rakes to the yard roads including splitting and shunting locos or partial rakes. Users were immediately presented with all movements in a gantt style view that they could interact with and impacts of changes were automatically calculated.
Calculated KPI's assisted with scenario analysis including road occupancy over time and utilisation of the terminal lifting equipment.

Compagnie des bauxites de Guinée (CBG) Bauxite Supply Chain Model

CBG have been using our supply chain simulation models for feasibility studies for over twenty years. With an operation covering mining, railing on a shared track, port stockyards with a drying process and ship loading in a tidal constrained port, there is much to consider when planning to increase throughput.

CBG was seeking to expand their operation by several million tonnes per annum. With their existing simulation model, we firstly added the associated infrastructure upgrades which included additional rail sidings and port conveyors. We then modified business rules within the model to incorporate the new equipment. Lastly, InterDynamics ran a suite of scenarios to determine the bottleneck in the supply chain and then optimised the rollingstock configuration to maximise their supply chain volume.