Sales and operations planning in sugarcane industries

• Grant number: 16/08293-5
• Support type: Research Grants - Innovative Research in Small Business - PIPE
• Duration: December 01, 2016 - August 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computer Systems
• Principal researcher: Claudio Adriano Policastro
• Grantee: Claudio Adriano Policastro
• Company: Atenatec Soluções Tecnológicas Ltda. - ME
• City: São Carlos

Abstract

The objective of this project is the development of a system of sales and operations planning for the sugarcane industry, able to perform a multiperiod and multiproduct planning of commercial strategies - finding for each planning period suggestions on storage and sale and production of each product in order to maximize the contribution margin of a power plant and consequently, the profit increase. This system will use the platform of modeling and simulation already developed by the Pentagro, the BdME® software, developed by employing labor and 100% Brazilian technology, as a result of research supported by FAPESP (2007/PIPE 52004-9, 2009/51657-4, 2013-50781-9 and 2014-50543-3) and CNPq (555716/Sílica 2009-0).The system will integrate: i) a graphical user interface that allows the definition of the period and the planning assumptions of vends and operations; II) the BdME® software simulation machine, for stationary simulation of production processes of ethanol, sugar and bioenergy. The BdME ® simulation machine will be integrated into the proposed system through the existing XML Protocol that allows any third system trigger the simulation of an industrial process in the sugar/energy; III) the financial module of the BdME® software, completed recently and the result of P&D supported by the company itself, able to calculate the costs for each unit operation in industrial plant; IV) a set of methods and structures for the automation of the design of experiments (DOE) and statistical processing of the results of the simulations to be used for the sales and operations planning; v) a optimization mechanism able to maximize the contribution margin of a business company, considering multiple constraints and multiple decision variables; vi) a set of methods and structures (OLEDB, OPC, .NET) to access the system database, as well as to access to external systems: ERPs and other existing legacy system of the plants. Sales and operations planning, is an aggregate planning process that occurs in a time horizon of several months that aims to reconcile the demands of the market products with proper management of the assets and the costs of the organization. Some academic models and some power plants have tried to circumvent this problem by means of spreadsheets or through stochastic programming for the hierarchical production planning. These approaches, however, feature a gap between what is planned and what is executed, that gap is due to the limitations of the models used, which disregard certain restrictions from the mass and energy balances and the installed capacity, as well as disregard the fact that the flexibility of the industrial plant, in terms of operational maneuvers, is dependent upon several variables whose values change throughout a crop (e.g. raw material, impurities, climate, etc.). In this context, this research project aims to fill this gap in the multiperiod tell and planning business strategies and products to sucroenergéticas plants, having as starting point the software modeling and simulation of sugarcane BdME®.The extension of the current portfolio of Pentagro with the incorporation of a system for sales and Operations Planning to plant sugar cane will allow you to decide what, how much and when to produce of each product in order to get the maximum profitability of the business of our customers. (AU)