Improving a Gas Filling Line Using Business Process Management and Simulation

Process reengineering, crucial for boosting productivity and competitiveness, often faces challenges in accurately capturing current processes and predicting outcomes. For modelling and analysing systems, business process management (BPM) and simulation are among the most popular methodologies and tools. This work showcases the study and suggested improvement of a bottling line using BPM and simulation. BPM provided the overall methodology, while simulation modelled the current state, analysed resource utilisation, and explored improvement scenarios. This study revealed that the filling activity was the main bottleneck, thus becoming the primary focus for improvement. Simulating different scenarios allowed for a comprehensive understanding of process dynamics and the effects of the proposed changes. The chosen scenario is expected to achieve a 10% increase in the throughput of large gas bottles, a 9% reduction of cycle time, and an 11% reduction in the bottleneck’s waiting time.