Monte Carlo simulation for construction of control charts for the ethanol-loading process in the sugar-alcohol industry

Abstract

The aim of this study was to apply a Monte Carlo simulation for the construction of control charts for the loading process of ethanol in a company of the sugar-alcohol sector. The study was conducted using Monte Carlo simulation and data having a triangular distribution, and the result was used to define the upper and lower limits of the control charts, which were created in order to identify problems in the ethanol loading process. The experiment was conducted with information from an ethanol company located in northwestern São Paulo, which provided part of its database with the waiting times for trucks at each stage of the loading process before they are dispatched to serve distributors located in different cities. We concluded that the applied methodology was satisfactory for the analysis of atypical cities, enabling a practical and precise preview to identify failures in the process and, consequently, to reduce the spread of the loading times among the distributors.