Manufacturing Plant Planing - is one Elevator enough?

[germanengineer]

Hello,

I am new to the Forum so I'd like to start with a short introduction of myself:

I am a german industrial engineer with about one and a half year of job experience. Currently I am working on a restructuring project within a german company. I am the responsible project manager for the layout of several different but somehow related assembly halls. But enough for the moment. My problem is that I need to know how long the capacity of one elevator will be sufficient to suit for the delivery of materials and assembled parts from stock and others halls into one another (don't hesitate to tell me how I could have expressed myself better. I am willing to learn, as I would love to move to the US and work there some time cause my wife is from the states). Everything based on the current usage of the elevator and some expected numbers of increased production for the future. I know that having only one elevator is also a risk but this shouldn't be part of the discussion. I tried to get the data from a company who builds elevators but they said the had to reinstall some new soft and hardware to "our" elevator that certainly wasn't worth it. There must be an other way to estimate or better calculate it. Probably someone can help.

Regards,

Germanengineer

[ewilliams]

Guten Tag!
I would suggest proceeding rather as follows: Build a simulation model driven by the current capacity of the elevator (cargo capacity by weight and/or volume, and operating speed) to the extent known, and current arrival rates placing a demand on the elevator. I understand that you already know the current arrival rates, and if the elevator is installed and in use, you can get its capacities. If it is not already in use, make two estimates of its capacities -- one unreasonably high and one unreasonably low. Run the model under these scenarios and check that the results make sense ("validation"). If you had to make the two estimates mentioned, run the model with intermediate values for the elevator capacities. Then run the model over a long period of time (perhaps many months) with gradually increasing load arriving at the elevator, and observe "How long is it before the elevator becomes the constraint on the system?" Further questions are welcome; perhaps I have misunderstood parts of your question ("Willkommen an weitere Fragen, es ist moeglich, dass ich Ihre Frage teilweise misverstanden habe."). Viel Glueck im neuen Jahr, Edward Williams