Dynamic of sugarcane stock-on-wheels in mills: a trade-off between stocked volume versus the risk of lack of cane

• Grant number: 18/19755-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2018
• End date: November 30, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Production Engineering - Production Management
• Principal Investigator: João Eduardo Azevedo Ramos da Silva
• Grantee: Marco Giunta
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências em Gestão e Tecnologia (CCGT). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). Campus de Sorocaba. Sorocaba , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The logistics systems represent a crucial part of the sugar and alcohol industry, and one of the biggest challenges is to keep the continuous feeding of sugarcane for milling. Once that the production at the mill is a continuous process and the delivery of sugar cane follows a discrete process susceptible to uncertainties, it is necessary to maintain stocks to avoid interruptions. This issue becomes more complex considering the product is perishable and stocking and transportation processes should be fast as they affect the quality of extraction. Thus, this work focuses on sugarcane harvesting, transshipment and transportation (CTT) processes, in particular, the unloading process at the mill, and aims to evaluate the behavior of different cane stock volumes kept over wheels, quantifying the risk of lack of cane for milling. In this case, it is possible to plan this stock based on the number of reserve sets of semi-trailers that operate in the drop and hook system. The system considers the exchange of loaded semi-trailers by empty ones at the entrance of the mills and enables a better usage of the traction unit. Changes in the number of dedicated tractors for the semi-trailers handling and at the unloading points also interfere at the continuity of the supply. Scenarios that contemplate modifications to the sugarcane reception system in the mills will be compared and evaluated by means of discrete event simulation, since this technique allows representing properly the dynamic interaction of the involved resources (trucks, tractors, semi-trailers reserves and points of unloading) and quantifying the risk of lack of sugarcane.