What to Simulate and Why

In the second part of What is Simulation, we cover what you might simulate, and the benefits you might hope to achieve.

What to Simulate?

Simulation is often used when the real environment cannot be used or replicated. The real world version might be too expensive, too dangerous or just impractical to use.

It’s easy to see that wars, natural disasters and rare events cannot be replicated so need to be simulated.

But day-to-day business activities benefit from simulation as well.

With simulation, you can replicate a business environment without loss of productive time, capital cost, upsetting customers or waiting a year to see what might happen.

You can speed up or slow down time and set-up scenarios that represent very rare circumstances.

You can also replicate the same scenario over and over again, which is important to help understand & prepare for such events.

We did a simulation for Sydney Ferries, where they could alter time tables to see what the impact might be on passenger throughput.

If they tried that in real life then there would likely be a riot from confused and stranded passengers.

Margins are usually too tight to stop production or activity to experiment with new procedures or schedules; and you certainly wouldn’t fit a multi-million dollar piece of kit, just to see if it works.

With simulation, you can replicate a business environment without loss of productive time, capital cost, upsetting customers or waiting a year to see what might happen.

From an analytical & decision-support point of view, we tend to find that anything that involves moving lots of items or people around, works well in a simulation.

Sometimes known as repetitive gain, finding a small improvement in process can save a bucket of cash in the long run.

Benefits of Simulation Modelling

Simulation is ideally used for Decision support in a commercial environment, whether it be manufacturing, production, warehousing, logistics, supply chain etc.

3D Simulations give both a visual and analytical approach to determine the most effective scenarios, or to understand the implications of change.

Questions we often answer include:

• Will our new system cope with throughput?
• Do we need 2 robots or 3?
• Which staff schedule will work best?
• How sensitive is this new process to problems or demand?

Simulation in Training

Because simulations can recreate experiences, they hold great potential for training people for almost any situation.

People, especially adults, learn better by experience than through reading or lectures. Simulated experiences can be just as valuable a training tool as the real thing.

If a pilot only needs to practice taking off then that’s all they need to do; the simulation can start at the end of the runway and be reset once take-off has been completed.

This practice can be run maybe 10 times in the time the real plane preps, taxis, takes off, liaises with traffic control, lands, taxis, shuts down, etc.

Oh, and if they screw up and crash, then it doesn’t really matter.

Simulation in training doesn’t necessarily require any technology at all; role-play is a well known activity, with little or no technology.

However, if CombatFX get involved, the participants are in for a memorable experience. Drawing from years of experience in the film industry; their blank firing weapons and pyrotechnic effects can replicate a combat situation or riot with scary reality.

Chapters so far …

1. What is Simulation?   -  http://tmnsimulation.com.au/what-is-simulation-part-1/
2. What to simulate, and why.  -  http://tmnsimulation.com.au/what-is-simulation-part-2/
3. Tools available to the analyst, and the jobs they do. (due in November)