Sem título em inglês

Author(s)

André Bergsten Mendes

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Escola Politécnica (EP/BC)
• Defense date: 1999-06-11

Examining board members

Rui Carlos Botter; Marco Antonio Brinati; Floriano Carlos Martins Pires Junior

• Advisor: Rui Carlos Botter

Abstract

Tietê-Paraná Waterway is a complex inland navigation system that crosses the southeast area of Brazil, and it is an alternative mean of transportation still not very explored, that connects 5 great Brazilian states, besides being a connection link with the countries of MERCOSUL. The waterway dimensions limits the barges to 60m x 11m x 2,5m, but when coupled, form convoys with capacity of up to 4500 tons. These vessels transport dry bulk (agricultural commodities) and wet bulk (fuels) in the long course, and sand and sugar-cane in short distances. Due to the fact of the producing centers and of the consuming centers are distant from the waterway, the efficiency of the waterway transportation is highly dependent of the efficiency of the whole logistics system. Therefore the transport systems in the origin and destiny points (road and rail transport), as well as the storage in the intermodal terminals should be designed and operated in an effective and balanced way to turn a competitive system. The objective of this current research is to give a fast and realistic answer to the design problem of a transportation system using different combined modals. Therefore, given an origin and a destiny, a cargo type, its monthly demand and the modals of transportation, the model would design each part of this intermodal system, giving as a response the configuration of the fleet of trucks and the number of necessary trips, the number of rail compositions and their frequency of requisition, the fleet of vessels and the storage capacity of the terminals. The system design is focused in the solution that attends the monthly demand at a minimum cost. Therefore the economical aspects of each operation are also considered.To solve this complex problem, the technique of probabilistic simulation was used, because it allows to model with larger precision the interaction among the several subsystems, besides allowing to represent the randomness of the system. Simulation is also an appropriate tool to represent the traffic jams in the locks and in the passage through the channels and also to lead with the occupation of terminal\'s berths. The system consists of a module of data entrance, in which the user defines the standard scenario that should be simulated. The computational model was developed using the simulation language ARENA, that has a rich graphic interface, modules of data analysis (input and output analyzer), tools for construction of customized templates, programming complemented by resources of Visual Basic for Applications and a scenario manager that allows to program several serial runs of the model. (AU)