Discrete Event Simulation

Discrete event simulation!!!

I chose to do a search through LexisNexis Academic and found an interesting article. It is called Discrete-Event Simulation Guides Pipeline Logistics. It starts out by mentioning the four contributing authors to the article. In continuing, the reader gets some quick background information on discrete-event simulation and a couple kinds of pipelines. The authors mention two specific pipelines: refined products pipelines and multiproduct pipelines.

Next in line comes a short discussion on pipeline scheduling. According to the article, input and delivery are of the utmost importance within pipeline scheduling. Interface costs, energy costs, and maintenance costs can all be reduced, respectively, by finding optimal product input sequences and lot sizes, by finding optimal ways to reduce pipeline stoppages, and by finding optimal solutions regarding the pump switches. This is then followed by various formulations, assumptions, and approaches by the authors and previous sources in relation to optimizing pipeline scheduling. This section also contains the sentence, “The model includes binary variables to account for seasonal energy costs and avoid pumping operations during high-cost periods.” This sentence just struck me as fitting and apropos because, as of recently, we have discussed binary variables within our class setting.

The next heading, simulation, brings us to the third portion of the article. It opens up speaking about previous simulation models and the current model presented by the current authors. The two former models consist of a simulation one for the scheduling of injection and stripping operations in a real-world pipeline network, and the other was a hybrid one combining a “tabu search” with a discrete event simulation that addressed a real world multiproduct pipeline scheduling problem. The current model that is introduced in this article is a discrete event simulation one, and it is specifically for a trunk...