Operational Simulation of

Production Lines

Exercise 2: Modelling of the traffic flow at Central in Zurich

Hand-out: Tuesday, 17.10.2023

Hand-in: Tuesday, 31.10.2023 (10:00 am) via polybox
Documents: Lecture documents: Operational Simulation of Production Lines
Consultation: by appointment
Lecturer: Dr. Peter Acél, Dr. Andreas Kunz
Assistants: Valentina Gorobets, Leon Kroll

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Modelling: Traffic flow at Central in Zurich

The Central, the place eastern of the Zurich railway bridge, is an important traffic junction. At peak times there
are often massive traffic jams. Again and again, attempts have been made to solve this situation.

Objective of the Exercise

Individual completion of the preparatory steps for a simulation study. This includes:
• the formulation of questions to a real system,
• the definition of system boundaries
• the creation of an abstract conceptual model.
• Necessary data must be determined by each group of students themselves through observations at
Central.

Tasks

Preparatory step: Please select one aspect of Central, which shall be dealt with within the simulation study
(e.g. exits, bridge, traffic island, tram line(s), cars, pedestrians, ETH students, etc.) in order to determine the
“object of observation”. In order to avoid the multiple selection of the same task, contact your assistants
(personally or via e-mail) with your suggested selection. According to „First come, first serve“ – the time of e-
mail delivery is decisive. There will be no identical tasks.

1. Define two specific goals which you want to achieve with your simulation study (10%)
2. Draw or organize a plan of the Central and mark the system boundaries on this plan in accordance with
your task. What traffic flows do you consider to achieve the objectives you have defined? What do you
neglect and why? (10%)
3. Design/draw an abstract model of a defined system and describe it in keywords. Point out the difference
between plan and model (200 words max) to justify the abstraction decisions. (20%)
4. Create an experimental plan, with which you can achieve your goals. (10%)
5. What data do you need to collect in order to simulate the proposed model? How can you gather this data?
(min. 5 items) (10%)
6. Create a simulation model of the abstract model (defined in 3.) in Tecnomatix and run the simulation
according to the experimental plan. (15%)
7. Interpret the results. Do you trust the results? (15%)
8. Make sure that your documentation has a meaningful structure and a coherent description. Keep the text
length as short as possible. The clarity and understandability of documentation will be evaluated separately.
(10%)

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Evaluation criteria

Work package Weighting [%]

1. Objectives 10%

2. System boundaries 10%

3. Experimental plan 10%

4. Abstract model 20%

5. Data collection 10%

6. Simulation 15%

7. Interpretation 15%

8. Documentation 10%

Hand-in

Please upload the results on polybox.

• Documentation of your considerations and results (1. to 7.), as a *.pdf
• Plant Simulation Model

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