UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DARTMOUTH

MNE 530
Lab Assignment Airport
October 2016

Under the guidance of

Professor Soheil Yousefsibdari
By
Umesh Babariya ID: 01541559

UMD October 2016/MNE 530

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INDEX

SR. NO
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

CHAPTER NAME
Problem Introduction
Basic Definitions
Part A: Arena Simulation Model
Flow chart of Module
Building the Module
Part A: Result
Part B: Arena Simulation Model
Flow chart of Module
Building the Module
Part B: Result And Comparison
Part C: Arena Simulation Model
Flow chart of Module
Building the Module
Part C: Result
Part D: Arena Simulation Model
Flow chart of Module
Building the Module
Part D: Result

PAGE NO.
3
4
5

7
8

9
10

11
12

13

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PROBLEM INTRODUCTION


1. Problem description
Travelers arrive at the main entrance door of an airline terminal according to an exponential
interarrival time distribution with mean 1.6 minutes. The travel time from the entrance to the checkin is distributed uniformly between 2 and 3 minutes. At the check-in counter, travellers wait in a single
line until one of the five agents is available to serve them. The check-in time (in minutes) follows a
Weibull distribution with parameters b = 7.76 and a = 3.91 . Upon completion of their check-in,
travellers exit to their gates.
a. Create a simulation model, including animation, of this system. Run the simulation for
ten 16-hour shifts to determine the average time in system, average number of
passengers completing check-in, and the average length of the check-in queue.

b. Modify the foregoing model by adding agent breaks. The 16 hours are divided into two
8-hour shifts. Agent breaks are staggered, starting at 90 minutes into each shift. Each
agent is given one 15-minute break. Agent lunch breaks (30 minutes) are also staggered,
starting 3.5 hours into each shift. Compare the results of this model to the results without
agent breaks.


c. During the verification process, it was discovered that there were really two types of
passengers. The first passenger type arrives according to an exponential interarrival
distribution with mean 2.4 minutes and has a service time (in minutes) following a gamma
distribution with parameters b = 0.42 and a = 10.4 . The second type of passenger
arrives according to an exponential distribution with mean 4.4 minutes and has a service
time (in minutes) following 3 plus an Erlang distribution with parameters ExpMean = 0.54
and k = 15 (i.e., the Expression for the service time is 3 + ERLA(0.54, 15)). Modify the
model from part b to include this new information, and compare the results.

d. Now consider the problem in part a (no staff break and no two-type customer). Now
imagine that snow storm takes place in one of the major destination of the airport. The
storm causes a delay and if a passengers destination is stormed, they do not get served
and need to wait in another line (not at the counter) for the storm to be cleared. The
chance of storm is 2% in a given day and the probability of an arriving customer to be the
stormed city (if any storm occurs) is 20%. Simulate this situation and evaluate how long it
take for the airport to return to its normal operation.

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BASIC DEFINITIONS
1. System: A collection of entities (people, machines, etc.) that interact together toward the
accomplishment of some logical end.
2. Model: An abstract representation of a system, usually containing logical or mathematical
relationships that describe a system in terms of its state, events, entities and attributes, and
lists.
3. System state: Collection of variables containing all the information necessary to describe the
system at any point in time. Defined relative to the objectives of the study.
4. Activity: Duration of specified length (such as a service time or interarrival time) that is
specified by a constant or by a probability distribution.
5. Event: An instantaneous occurrence that may change the state of the system.
6. Entity: An object or component of the system which requires explicit representation in the
system (e.g., server, customer, machine).
7. Attributes: Properties of a given entity. Could include customer priority, routing order of a job
through a job shop, time of arrival for a customer, status (busy or idle) of a server.
8. List: Collection of (permanently or temporarily) associated entities, ordered in some logical
fashion. Often list of customers waiting in queue, ordered by FIFO or priority.

9. Various statistics to be reviewed:
- time spent in the system for each part type
- number of parts in the queue of each machine - - production rate for each part type
- number of parts discarded

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PART A
ARENA SIMULATION MODEL

1. Flowchart of the Arena model

Figure 1: Flowchart for travelers arriving at the Airport

2. Building the Module:

Step 1: CREATE Module and ROUTE Module

Figure 2: Creating and assigning

As mentioned in the problem Travelers arrive at the main entrance door of an airline terminal
according to an exponential interarrival time distribution with mean 1.6 minutes. The travel time from
the entrance to the check-in is distributed uniformly between 2 and 3 minutes. So, in CREATE module
value 1.6 is given to the random exponential distribution. Travel time is given in terms of route
module.

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Step 2: Process Module

At the check-in counter, travellers wait in a single
line until one of the five agents is available to serve
them. The check-in time (in minutes) follows a
Weibull distribution with parameters

and
. Upon completion of their check-in,
travellers exit to their gates. So, using the PROCESS
module check in distribution is given and SET of 5
agents are selected as a Resources.
Figure 3: Check in Process

Step 3: Run Setup

As shown in the figure Run the simulation for ten 16-hour shifts to determine the average
time in system, average number of passengers completing check-in, and the average length
of the check-in queue Replication Length is set to 16 hours.

Step 4: Developing the LOGIC

According to problem description we need to design a LOGIC such that arrival travelers need to send
to the check in process. So, ROUTE and Station module is used to send the arrival travelers to Check
in process. Here as shown in the process flow chart of model all travelers are heading towards their
gate once they are done with check in.



Figure 4: The logic of the problem

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PART A RESULT

Animation of the Model:

Figure 5: Animation of the system

Figure sows the animation of the problem. Passengers arrived at the check in counter are
waiting at the counter, getting served with five agents and leaving the system and heading
towards their gates.

Collected statics from the report.

Average time of a passenger in the system
Number of Passenger completing check-in
Average length of a Check-in queue

0.2681
599
2.5442

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PART 2
ARENA SIMULATION MODEL

Modified Flowchart of model

Figure 6: Flowchart with agents having Breaks

For part b of the problem I have modified the foregoing model by adding agent breaks. Initially
all agents had a fixed capacity of service. This fixed capacity can be changed from the Resource
module of Basic Process. As shown in the figure agents type is now change to Based on
Schedule.

Figure 7: Scheduling breaks

The 16 hours are divided into two 8-hour shifts. Agent breaks are staggered, starting at 90
minutes into each shift. Each agent is given one 15-minute break. Agent lunch breaks (30
minutes) are also staggered, starting 3.5 hours into each shift. Compare the results of this
model to the results without agent breaks.

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PART B RESULT

Collected statics from the report.

Average time of a passenger in the system
Number of Passenger completing check-in
Average length of a Check-in queue

Comparison:

Average time of a passenger in the
system
Number of Passenger completing
check-in
Average length of a Check-in queue

0.4760
624
10.9324

Part A
0.2681

Part B
0.4760

599

624

2.5442

10.9324

From the above comparison we can say that adding brakes to the agents increase the
system efficiency. Average number of passenger completing check in increases from
599 to 624.

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PART C
ARENA SIMULATION MODEL

1. Flowchart of the Arena model

Figure 8: Type 1 Type 2 Passengers model

2. Building the Module:

Figure 9: Creating and assigning for Type 1 Type 2 Passengers

During the verification process, it was discovered that there were really two types of passengers. The
first passenger type arrives according to an exponential interarrival distribution with mean 2.4
minutes and has a service time (in minutes) following a gamma distribution with parameters b = 0.42
and a = 10.4 . The second type of passenger arrives according to an exponential distribution with
mean 4.4 minutes and has a service time (in minutes) following 3 plus an Erlang distribution with
parameters ExpMean = 0.54 and k = 15 . This is shown in the above figure.

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PART C RESULT

Collected Statics of Type 1 and Type 2 Passenger:

Average time of a passenger in the
system
Number of Passenger completing
check-in
Average length of a Check-in queue

UMD October 2016/MNE 530

Type 1 Passenger
0.2877

Type 2 Passenger
0.2902

390

204

3.3504

3.3504

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PART D
ARENA SIMULATION MODEL
1. Flowchart of the Arena model

Figure 10: Flowchart of Separating stormed passengers

2. Building the Module:

Here, DECIDE module is used to separate the stormed passenger from the arriving all
travellers. The Passengers going to stormed place have to wait in another queue. The storm
causes a delay and if a passengers destination is stormed, they do not get served. The chance of storm
is 2% in a given day and the probability of an arriving customer to be the stormed city (if any storm
occurs) is 20%.

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PART D RESULT

Collected statics from the report.

Average time of a passenger in the system
Number of Passenger completing check-in
Average length of a Check-in queue

0.2681
544
2.5442

UMD October 2016/MNE 530

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