Optimizing Safety and Productivity with Discrete Event and Agent-Based Hybrid Simulation
摘要
Accidents and injuries are a type of waste since they incur extra costs and time losses, which significantly impact social and job site culture. In addition, accidents introduce variability and disruption into the work process. Safety management emphasizes eliminating accidents, thereby reducing variability in work. Consequently, this proposal aims to study and assess the current state of incidents, their causes, and actions taken to develop a simulation model to predict possible positive changes in the process after applying lean management tools such as one-piece flow. This work presents a novel approach of using hybrid agent-based and discrete event simulation to quantify the impacts of overwork, process imbalance, and batch production on overall productivity and safety. In this work an incident-related index is developed to assess the likelihood of an incident, as well as to understand the impact of improved safety conditions on individual workers and the overall process.