Dedicated refurbishing line optimization by simulation

Simulation has gained importance in the consumer electronics After Market Service (AMS) industry, due tofactors such as uncertainty in product returns, stochastic processing times, and unknown or hard-to-predict product demand. Remanufacturing and refurbishing systems may not be analyzed using closed-form expressions due to the complexity caused by above-mentioned factors. In this paper, a detailed simulation optimization study is proposed to better allocate resources within the testing and refurbishing processes. Time studies have been conducted to identify the probability distributions that will be used in the simulation. Also a detailed simulation model using SIMIO® is presented to reflect the complete refurbishing process. We present a framework that can be used in decision-making sequences, allowing us to identify current bottlenecks and evaluate alternate scenarios to improve the system performance.