Discrete event simulation of wood supply chain using the three-phase algorithm approach

The wood supply chain is highly important for timely delivery of processing factories' orders and preventing damages caused by natural factors, such as wood beetles, freezing, and rotting of products. These wood cargos must exit rapidly from the jungle by maximum use of resources and amenities available for warehousing or transferring to processing factories. In these cases, decision-making skills and logistics management strategies must be taken based on the contingency advanced scheduling. Therefore, the extant study introduced a contingency planning solution composed of a discrete event simulation model for analysis at the operational level of approaches to deal with challenging occurrences of business decisions, as well as transportation patterns based on the analysis of results of decisions made before actual implementation, which is costly and long term. This tool allows managers to design their contingency plans to cope with natural disasters and possible hazards. The present research assessed the increased use of available trucks and carriages' capacity, as well as reduction of loading time, trucks' queue, and stockyard' capacity in terminal under different conditions. The optimum capacity and number of trucks per train schedule considering limited resources, such as the number of trucks and the terminal depot's warehouse capacity. The terminal station has a gateway and many platforms for unloading so that trucks move in stations based on the FIFO model and probable carriages' loading schedule. Furthermore, computer simulation instruments must be used in this research to focus on the multi-product supply chain with a limited lifetime and probable risks.