Waste management in a wire and cable company through system dynamics approach

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics of waste production in the product structure of a wire and cable manufacturing company that deals with a high-volume waste and proposes strategies that reduce product costs.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology for this research is descriptive and expressive modeling in a way that theories of research have been extracted from literature and field studies have been done based on the company specialists’ views. The system dynamics has been used to analyze and model waste in a wire and cable firm.

Findings

Applying SD approach in the paper not only helps to identify the structure of producing the waste, which is complicated and dynamic, but also proposes ways to reduce them and illustrate the applied results. The second outcome shows that in the waste management there should be a digression in a managerial view to the systematic thought. In the other word as in the system dynamic approach, the expansion of the model boundary is one of the objectives to find appropriate solution. The behavior model showed that in the waste management the most effective way to reduce the waste is to buy qualified raw material which is out of the firm.

Originality/value

This paper not only shows that the system dynamic approach is appropriate for the waste management problems which are complicated and dynamic but also proved that in the waste management system the solutions are not always near or within the firm. They should be identified by a systematic approach.

Citation

Saryazdi, A.H.G. and Ghavidel, M. (2018), "Waste management in a wire and cable company through system dynamics approach", International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 35 No. 7, pp. 1445-1458. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJQRM-05-2017-0102