Arena Newsletter and Blog

An Old Danish proverb says,

It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. 

Yet, businesses rely upon predictions and forecasts to make decisions each and every day; for better or for worse.

Data driven models are quick to develop, yet powerful for complex processes. SimWell, our Premier Partner in Canada, has put together this four part series which will explain what Data Driven Models are, why they are important, and how to begin making your own in Arena.

Data-Driven Supply Chain Model Built with Arena

Using Arena, it is easy to build a supply chain simulation model where trucks deliver material from 5 supplier sites to 100 different customer locations. Data-driven models are a very powerful type of simulation models, which rely on data to drive the actions taking place. This model only requires 17 modules of flowchart logic and creating animation is not mandatory. Andre at SimWell, our Premier Partner in Canada, has created a video to further explain how to build such a model, using the following data driven tools:

Time is our most precious commodity, and wasting even the smallest amount can be detrimental to your business.

In a previous role, I worked in logistics, specifically with manufacturers in the northeastern United States. Every job we performed required specific arrival, processing, and departure times. Any extra downtime would increase costs both internally on labor and externally on driver detention (see Issue Type – Driver Detention). On one job in particular, we had a series of trucks arriving over four nights, three trucks at a time. Each truck had a specific arrival time of 5:00PM, 7:00PM, and 9:00PM. If we weren’t on time we typically saw costs of:

It comes as no surprise that being organized is the key to success in project management and that means creating a functional specification.  Whether you are building one model you are going to use for analysis or two or three, organization is key.  A critical aspect of organization will be defining those elements that you are going to use in the model or share across models.  Taking the time to define the key resources, variables, attributes and other elements will allow you to potentially create one master database to test your models, saving you time and helping to keep your analysis organized as well.  Members of the Arena Consulting Team have employed this technique with great success, using one master database structure and two very different models for a client to test out potential design ideas. 

In this month’s case study, one of the chief goals of the simulation model was to test several potential operational modifications. When there are several changes to test, the questions arise:

If your team is consistently underperforming, you’ve got a tough road ahead.  I hate to break it to you, but in our consulting practice we find that people can and want to perform well, and it’s most often the systems put in place that force underperformance. 

Arena allows you to define conveyor operation as a fixed path for material movement with pre-defined entry and exit points using the modules on the Advanced Transfer panel. Each entity to be conveyed must wait for sufficient space on the conveyor in order to gain entry and start transferring. When the entity reaches the end of the conveyor, the conveyor is disengaged until the entity is removed from the conveyor or conveyed to another station.