Process Modeling and Simulation

Challenge 

What if you could try out new technologies and operating methods before the changes are made?  Suppose that all the experimentation could be done risk free, without committing any capital, wasting time or disrupting the actual process?  

Imagine you are in a highly competitive industry and managing a manufacturing or service operation that is burdened by outdated technologies and inefficient work practices.  To stay competitive, you know that changes must be made, but you are not sure what changes would work best, or even certain they will work at all. You would like to try out new ideas for improving your business process, but recognize that it will be very time consuming, expensive and disruptive to the current operation.   

Suppose there were some low cost and risk free way to rearrange any activity, reallocate any resource, or change any operational procedure?   

Solution 

Our consultants can work with you to model your existing or proposed process using computer-based process modeling techniques.   Once the model is developed, the computer is used to mimic the process, allowing for analysis of performance in terms of cycle time, throughput capacity, and resource utilization. 

Approach 

Our Process Modeling and Simulation approach allows you to visualize, analyze and improve business processes.  Working with you on a selected process, our consultants will use process flowcharting tools to define the process flow.  Process information such as resources, production volumes, decision rules, and costs is entered into the model.  Once this is complete, a process simulation is run. 

The simulation animation allows you to actually see people, paperwork and other objects flowing through the system, making it easy to recognize bottlenecks and see how extensive they are.  It is also a powerful tool for communicating changes.  For example, by animating changes, your employees will be able to visualize the effects of proposed changes on their jobs, making implementation easier.  

Our consultants will perform “What-if?” analyses of your process in a compressed time frame giving you insight into ways to improve your processes that would otherwise be unattainable. By controlling input settings, we will find the course of action that will optimize the entire system’s performance.  

Results 

Process Simulation takes all the guesswork out of decision-making enabling you to make informed and confident decisions. It also allows you to:  

p      Communicate changes or visually evaluate your current process through live animation

p      Describe processes easily in a minimum of steps

p      Include people and resources in your model so you improve the success rate of your implementation.

p      Perform “what-if?” analysis and optimize system performance.