Abstract:
Outbound logistics management has always remained a perplexing problem to all organizations, especially to a cement manufacturing unit. Although its importance in the organizational performance has always been known, for several decades no serious attempt was made to unify and organize a body of knowledge on this subject.

Today organizations are facing problems of survival because of acute competition. In this context, it is worthwhile to make a study of the outbound logistics management system in a manufacturing undertaking for improvement. With this view, it was thought desirable to undertake a case study of a public limited cement industry which has been successful throughout its existence.

This paper focuses on the use of discrete simulation tool (EXTEND SIM8) in the outbound logistic system design of a cement plant. This study specified a proposal of using Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and innovative logistic methods for the better output of cement plant. The queue of the trucks in front of the loading station can be reduced and the output can be increased. Hence customer satisfaction can also be increased. This specification would then help the design phase of the whole plant and would contribute for the rationalization of the use of cement plant resources.

Keywords: Outbound logistic system, discrete event simulation, EXTEND SIM8, optimisation, queue length.