Determining the effects of implementing IMO’s Hong Kong Convention’s requirements on the productivity of a ship recycling yard by using discrete event simulation

ABSTRACT

Ship Recycling (SR) is considered as a sustainable solution for ships which reach end-of-life (EOL). Generally, EOL ships are sent to SR yards located in developing countries. However, the health, safety and environmental conditions in these yards cause a big concern for the international community. As a result, new international regulations were developed, and SR yards will be required to meet those criteria defined by the regulators. To stay competitive in a more stringent regulatory framework, their production efficiency will become more important. This paper proposes a framework for SR yards to better understand the problems related to resource optimisation and define the gap between current regulations and the existing yards. The framework uses discrete event simulation to create the required evidence for optimising the production. This study demonstrates the framework can effectively identify problems, propose improvement measures, and conduct resource optimisation in an evidence-based manner.

KEYWORDS:

• Ship recycling
• efficiency
• sustainability
• process flow
• discrete event simulation
• ARENA software

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Newton fund and DIKTI as the funder of this research study, Newton-DIKTI Doctoral Scholarship and Development of Green and Sustainable Ship Recycling Industry for Indonesia - Institutional Links Project [Grant Number 414709933].