Archive for category Research Area

How to optimize unequal area facility layout to maximize storage

work-1713103_640Facility layout problem, especially with the unequal departmental area (UAFLP), is one of the problems studied in combinatorial optimization and has received the attention of many researchers in the past decade. The goal of UAFLP is to allocate departments into a facility to obtain the most efficient arrangement. The UAFLP study has a final objective to minimize the total cost of material handling between departments.

Competition in today’s business world is inevitable. Increasing the quality of productivity becomes one of the keys to success in facing competition with business management effectively and efficiently. This can happen by maximizing existing resources ie employees, machines, and other facilities. Therefore, the industry needs to be able to optimize production capability and effectiveness to face competitors. The production process becomes the key that needs to be managed effectively to minimize production costs with higher effectiveness.

Facility layout design has a close reinforcement to the size of the physical arrangement of elements in a manufacturing and service system, such as department, machinery, operational tools, and so on. The purpose of the facility layout design is the design with the minimum material handling cost. With proper facility layout, material handling costs can be reduced. In general, material handling contributes about 20-50 percent of the total. Reduction in the company’s operational costs, along with the increased efficiency of the production system becomes a necessity that every industry needs to do.

The problem of facilities layout that is often the researcher’s attention is Unequal Area Facility Layout Problem (UAFLP). Initially, UA-FLP was developed by Armor and Buffa (1963). They explain that there is a rectangular facility with a fixed Width and Height and several (n) departments that need to be allocated to the facility. There are some problems that have not found the optimal solution and require a long computation time. The goal is to reduce non-feasible solutions to reduce the complexity of possible solutions.

This research will develop a mathematical model using Mixed Integer Programming method based on Flexible Bay Structure. Some additional constraint functions will be attempted to be added to the model. Testing is done by comparing the effect of each additional constraint function that has different approaches in cutting the complexity of possible solutions. The comparison result of the combination of the constraint function used indicates which constraint function has a major influence in reducing the computation time of the model.

This research concludes that all simulated problem sets using additional constraints in the model can provide better computation time than before. The effect that occurs can be the value of the solution becomes not optimum or remain optimum. All computational time gives significant improvement.

This research is conducted by Randa Adi Saputra and Komaruddin

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Does the power of Social Media influences E-Commerce Business?

ecommerce-2140603_640Social media has become a great part of someone’s life. People can’t wait to update their social media accounts, or at least get updated about the world simply by watching their timeline. Social media here is defined as every internet-based application that allows you to create and exchange contents with other people around the globe.  The number of Internet users in Indonesia has reached 132.7 million people in 2016. With a number this high, Internet also is seen as a potential business platform. In 2016 the total of e-commerce in Indonesia has reached 26.2 million units, with its biggest selling product is in the fashion segment. Internet is not only giving advantages for companies for their business, but also some threats regarding the tougher competition in the market, especially for e-commerce companies.

A study has found that marketing through social media gave significant effect on increasing trust and loyalty of customers towards a brand. Therefore, companies see social media as a potential marketing medium, to retain their competitiveness in the market. By increasing their customers’ trust and loyalty towards their brand, companies can focus on expanding their market and gaining new customers.

According to several papers that this research was based on, there are five social media marketing (SMM) factors, (1) Website Security, (2) Clear & updated website, (3) Social media tools activity, (4) Online advertisement, and (5) Online interactivity. The result of this research shows that three of those factors, which are (1) Clear & updated website, (2) Online advertisement, and (3) Online interactivity, give significant effect on customer’s brand trust. While brand trust gives significant effect on brand loyalty. Therefore it can be concluded that those 3 factors of SMM give also significant effect in brand loyalty indirectly through brand trust.

We develop a structural equation model (SEM) to see which and how each social media factors influencing the buying behavior of the customer. Our models show that there are 3 factors that must be the focus of the e-commerce sites when using the social media platform.

This research is conducted by Annissa Tayara Callista and Akhmad Hidayatno

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Educating society about energy transition through excitement of a game? Why not!

Transergy WelcomeThe increase of energy consumption especially in the form of oil is being an issue for certain countries including Indonesia. Within the rise of 3.99% of energy consumption annually, transportation sector having the largest portion of energy consumption (Indonesia Outlook Energy, 2016). There are 17.523.967 vehicles in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, with 74.66% of the numbers are motorbikes and 18.64% are cars. The use of oil in most land transportation vehicles has lead oil to be the most used fuel by the market share of 32% compared to other type of fuel. Unfortunately, the oil production in Indonesia has been constantly decreased within 4.41% per year. It leads Indonesia to be the net importer of oil and depending on the oil supply by other countries. The condition of being net importer of oil having many effects of short and long run in Indonesia’s economic. Vacation Menuthe respond to the increase of oil consumption, the government releasing an energy diversification program to reduce oil consumption by substitute the oil to other type of fuel like gas, biofuel, renewable energy and many others. One of the diversification plan is the conversion of oil to natural gas program. This program has been conducted since 1987, however until 2011 it only achieved 0.03% conversion rate. Based on the study from Bureau of Oil and Gas, one of the success key for conversion from oil to gas program is through education and socialization to the society. Conversion from oil to gas is a kind of energy transition which is defined by Chappin (2011) as the socio-technical transition in the scale of sector. To do the simulation about energy transition physical and social components from the energy transition system needs to be captured.

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2nd Asia-Pacific Region System Dynamics Conference

APSDC 2017 The 2nd Asia-Pacific Region System Dynamics Conference of the System Dynamics Society were held at UTown, National University of Singapore. The theme for this conference is Charting a Path to a Humane and Sustainable Future: Asia’s Leadership Role. The conference brought together various disciplines that have been using Systems Thinking, System Dynamics and Systems Engineering approach in understanding and solving problems. The conference seeks to popularize and extend systems thinking and System Dynamics modelling in the Asia-Pacific Region by facilitating interactions between practitioners from the region and around the world, introducing newcomers to the field, and keeping practitioners aware of current developments.

It brought together so many practitioners in the regions, including group of Indonesian SD practitioners. We hope that in the future, we could establish an Indonesia Chapter of System Dynamics, since currently Indonesia falls into the Australasian Chapters and newly established ASEAN Chapter.

SEMS Lab presented 2 papers in this event that falls in the strategy group of papers.

These are the excerpt of the papers presented by SEMS Lab

1. System Dynamics Approach in Managing Turnover Problem in Profesional Service Firms

Authors: Arry Destyanto, Armand Moeis, Akhmad Hidayatno, Mohammad Rizky Nur Iman

Talented human resources is one of the key factors in a firm’s success to maintain its competitive advantage in the global era. The rising trend of turnover is causing firms to rethink their strategy in maintaining their talented human resource. This issue challenges firms especially that rely on talented human resource such as professional service firms. Turnover has direct and indirect negative impact for firms. Previous researches had been conducted research to understand the underlying problem that causes turnover, and the strategy to overcome it. This research calls for a modeling structure of the turnover phenomena using a system dynamics approach, which can also be used to simulate various strategy. The output of the model is a recommendation of strategy that is most effective and has the best return on investment for organization. The results of simulation study will be discussed at the end of the paper.

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2. Scenario Planning using System Dynamics for Reducing Uncertainty on Managing Employee Turnover

Authors: Akhmad Hidayatno, Arry Destyanto, Armand Moeis, Mohammad Rizky Nur Iman

In order to maintain the competitiveness of an organization in the global competition era, the presence of qualified human resources has become one of the key factors. Unlike product quality, qualified human resources have the capacity and talents that are not easy to replicate. Therefore, researchers and practitioners have been looking for the best strategy to manage turnover in an organization. However, the problem with turnover is that it has become more dynamic and changes along time, causing for uncertainties in the impact of the strategy implemented. This research will show how ‘scenario planning’ is used in a system dynamics model to minimize the level of uncertainties. The scenarios generated are not limited to the changes in assumptions, but also includes alternatives of trends that may happen in the future (plausible scenario). This paper focuses on discussing the process of generating and testing the plausible scenarios to the model. The implication of the scenarios is also compared to the initial output of the model.

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Learning Strategic Sourcing Management through Serious simulation Game

Why bother with uninteresting hours of classroom session, when you can play a game and learn more?

high-bay-408222_960_720Despite the importance of its functionality, research shows that many of the world procurement and purchasing specialist around the world are still having trouble in developing and implementing an effective strategy towards sourcing, according to KMPG International report (2012). Some still perceive the approach in sourcing is to find the lowest cost and ignores the true potential of sourcing.

In the globalization era, the challenge in sourcing has been more complex than before and will continue to rise. Sourcing researcher, Kate Vitasek and alongside many others state that you should view sourcing as a business model with the goal to maximize value. Sourcing is not just merely obtaining products or services at the lowest price, but to obtain them at the right price. By choosing the right business model for your sourcing situation, you can  harness the true potential value sourcing.

Unfortunately, the concept of sourcing model is not yet widely recognized. Although many firms may have or are implementing some of them, the basic knowledge of the sourcing business model development process is still a problem to many sourcing professionals. In order to help the professionals to gain a better understanding of sourcing business model development process, a serious simulation game is presented as a solution.

Serious simulation game has been used in many pedagogical purposes throughout different fields such as supply chain management, business simulation, medical and military. The gaming environment creates an immersive learning medium and therefore is able to improve the learning process of its participants.

By developing a serious simulation game in form of a board game, participants are able to learn the key concepts of sourcing business models and the different impact of each models. Before the game participants can have the chance to develop and choose the best sourcing business model for the situation. The benefit of playing a game is that  participants can know whether they have chosen the right sourcing model.

The game presented in this research proves another example of a pedagogical use of a serious simulation game. Serious simulation game is seen as a suitable learning medium especially for the millennials. The immersive value offered by gaming help learner to stay focus. When learner are involved in the system, there is a better chance that they can understand and remember better. This is also an example of an experiential learning method, where learner can improve their mental models to make better decisions by learning through simulation.

Rizman, Arry, AkhmadThe serious simulation game presented, is developed through the game development guideline set by Richard D. Duke and his colleagues. Keeping in mind that the game must balance the realm of meaning, reality and play as suggested by Casper Hartevald in his “Triadic Game Design” book. The design process also look upon the examples of existing serious simulation game. A group of students from Universitas Indonesia were called as participant respondents of the game. Through the testing of the game, we learn how the game has helped the participants gaining better understanding of the subject.

In conclusion, we have seen how a serious simulation game can help learner to understand complex system which requires an effective learning medium. The game can be used as a learning medium alternatives for professionals and students. By improving their understanding of the system, hopefully they can put the knowledge into practice and solve issues surrounding sourcing strategy.

This research is conducted by M. Rizky Nur Iman, Arry Rahmawan and Akhmad Hidayatno

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