Proceedings of the 2019 Winter Simulation Conference
N. Mustafee, K.-H.G. Bae, S. Lazarova-Molnar, M. Rabe, C. Szabo, P. Haas, and Y.-J. Son, eds.
ANALYZING PRE-POSITIONING WITHIN A DISRUPTED
BULK PETROLEUM SUPPLY CHAIN
Manuel D. Rossetti
Julianna Bright
University of Arkansas
Department of Industrial Engineering
4207 Bell Engineering Center
Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the modeling of disruption events within a bulk petroleum supply chain through the
use of an object-oriented simulation library. We describe how the library models disruption events and
their effects on supply chain operations. This includes how to specify disruptions, mitigation strategies and
metrics that can be used to assess the impact of the disruption. The modeling is illustrated via an analysis
of a supply chain involving DLA Energy’s bulk petroleum supply chain as impacted by a category 4
hurricane scenario. The effectiveness of pre-positioning of inventory within the supply chain is illustrated.
1 INTRODUCTION
The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Energy Division manages the global supply chain network for bulk
petroleum products for the support of U. S. military bases. The bulk petroleum supply chain network
(BPSCN) is a complex supply network that consists of external commercial suppliers, DLA fuel terminals,
and end customer locations (mostly military bases). The network is supported through four major
transportation modes (barge, truck, rail, and pipeline), most of which are commercial entities. The network
supports eight different fuel products, which include three types of additives and five different fuel types.
For the purposes of this paper, we only consider U.S. standard commercial jet fuel.
The DLA Energy supply chain network is a global inter-connected network and has many unique issues
that make its efficient operation very challenging. In addition to supporting normal peace time operations,
the network must plan for and be able to support both war time and contingency operations for both local
and global theaters of operation. A key management issue is the uncertainty of demand because of these
operations, some of which have little advance warning. In addition, there is uncertainty in supply because
events may occur that disrupt the availability of fuel. We call these types of events disruption events. A
disruption event can cause changes in both supply and demand over a period of time. An example of such
an event is Hurricane Harvey, which made land fall in the Houston, Texas area in the summer of 2017.
Hurricane Harvey caused serious disruptions within the Houston area that had a rippling effect within the
U.S. because Houston is a key location for fuel refinery operations.
Rossetti and Bright (2018) describes the conceptual modeling required to represent bulk petroleum
supply chain networks within a simulation context. In addition, they describe the basic simulation
constructs of an object-oriented library that can be used to model the performance of a BPSCN over general
planning horizons involving normal and contingency operations. This paper builds on the work of Rossetti
and Bright (2018) to further describe the disruption scenario modeling that is supported by the simulation
library as well as performance measures that are useful in understanding the behavior of a system under
disruption events. In addition, the library supports the modeling of effectiveness of disruption mitigation
strategies. In particular, we provide the ability to assess pre-positioning strategies within the BPSCN.
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