05-24-2010, 12:09 PM
Was wondering if anyone had thoughts on the following:
With Houston being the petroleum capitol of the nation, plastic pellets are a major commodity that is produced around here. I'm seeing that the manufacturers are producing product 24/7 and then loading the pellets in covered hoppers and sending them to storage yards. Then when a customer makes a request, the hoppers are taken from the storage yard and sent on their way. Instead of storing thousands of tons of pellets in silos, they are stored in the covered hoppers in a huge yard east of Houston.
I think this would be a great operation to model (of course at a drastically reduced scale)... and since I ended up with an extra yard from the old layout which was incorporated into the new layout, I think I found the perfect use for it. But instead of plastic pellets, I think I'll go with GERN granulated flux. So GERN produces the flux, loads it in empties, sends the empties to the storage yard, then the hoppers ship from there to fill customer needs.
Any thoughts on making this an operational success? Good points, bad points? Operating schemes?
Here is a GoogleEarth image of the huge yard I mentioned. Thousands of covered hoppers there!
With Houston being the petroleum capitol of the nation, plastic pellets are a major commodity that is produced around here. I'm seeing that the manufacturers are producing product 24/7 and then loading the pellets in covered hoppers and sending them to storage yards. Then when a customer makes a request, the hoppers are taken from the storage yard and sent on their way. Instead of storing thousands of tons of pellets in silos, they are stored in the covered hoppers in a huge yard east of Houston.
I think this would be a great operation to model (of course at a drastically reduced scale)... and since I ended up with an extra yard from the old layout which was incorporated into the new layout, I think I found the perfect use for it. But instead of plastic pellets, I think I'll go with GERN granulated flux. So GERN produces the flux, loads it in empties, sends the empties to the storage yard, then the hoppers ship from there to fill customer needs.
Any thoughts on making this an operational success? Good points, bad points? Operating schemes?
Here is a GoogleEarth image of the huge yard I mentioned. Thousands of covered hoppers there!
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