The value of knowing

decisions faster and with greater confidence.
More than just an industry buzzword, the latest advances in digital manufacturing applications enable aerospace companies to make alterations to new product and plant designs in seconds and visualise how every minute change will affect the entire supply chain.

Paragon Simulation specialises in process simulation and business and financial modelling, helping organisations make better decisions by creating models which demonstrate the future and complement planning expertise.

Business modelling and computer simulation delivers speed and consistency of analysis which leads to managers making complex decisions faster and with greater confidence. Computer simulation is not simply about providing a digital view of manufacturing, but about reducing the risk associated with making choices from multiple options.

A computer simulation is designed to find solutions that are often counter-intuitive or very difficult to determine, and to measure the business change that can be expected. In a project requiring capital investment, a cost saving of at least 10% can often be identified through a simulation. Perhaps more telling is the number of occasions a model has revealed that the proposed investment will introduce new and unexpected challenges, or indeed will not deliver the improvements required. Implementing a programme of change which won't deliver is a very costly mistake, and models have often been used to avoid such unnecessary spend.

More positively, a model examining production processes can measure the impact on overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) by reducing waste and scrap, improving equipment reliability and other operational changes. By measuring the benefit, managers can determine ‘the size of the prize' and focus their limited time, money and resources on those areas that will deliver the greatest benefit.

In terms of the feedback from potential customers, seeing is believing. People that have personal experience of computer simulation are welcoming and eager to get started on the project. And when the work is completed, a regular comment we have is they wish they'd started earlier, so that there was time for a more in-depth study, or to examine more options.

Those that have little exposure to modelling have to go through a number of barriers, the first of which is acknowledging that they have a challenge which they can't find a solution to. There is a natural tendency to imagine that ‘the way things are done is the way things have to be done', and of course there are concerns over cost. Ironically, although modelling is an approach that reduces risk, those unfamiliar with it see it as a risky approach!

However, people we meet are proud of their companies and the contribution they make, and want to see their companies both successful and improving. We make this assumption when we speak to potential customers and this usually creates a relationship of trust which is needed to explore their challenges – often taking us to the very DNA of their business.

We've used computer simulation in many sectors to include human factors such as availability (including absenteeism and sickness), skills and productivity, and produced valuable information about business performance. It's true that in some cases the models have shown that the same operations can be produced with less labour.

But in others, performance improves by adding more staff, increasing their skills or deploying them more dynamically. For example, by introducing a preventative maintenance policy - which required more staff - equipment downtime was reduced, OEE improved and throughput increased.

In yet others, models have shown that capital investment will deliver performance improvement in one area, but create a bottleneck in another, which can be resolved by adding additional staff – often a counter-intuitive impact that was only revealed by computer simulation.

www.paragonsimulation.com