Tyler DiFrischia
Arena Simulation Account Manager
Arena in 2021 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM
In this session, Tyler will review the work we've participated in over the past year to improve our product and our collaboration with our customers. This includes our website update and URL transition, our work against COVID-19 and collaboration with hospital networks globally, and our support to our academic customers who were struggling with adjusting to class at home.
Tyler has been with Rockwell Automation for over 5 years as an Arena Simulation Account Manager. He also manages several other sectors of Rockwell Automation's Arena Simulation functions including International Partner Management, Marketing, and more. His role also includes being an Academic Liaison to professors and students.
Sydney Whipple
Unilever – Ben & Jerry’s, Category Engineer
Simulating Ice Cream Mix Making for Capacity Analysis
10:00AM - 11:00AM
Ben & Jerry’s - a world class manufacturer of ice cream and frozen desserts has experienced rapid growth within the last few years – never more so than within the last year. To continue to grow, there will need to be a major investment in infrastructure and equipment in 2022. This presentation will walk through a simulation created to analyze current infrastructure capacity, as well as a variety of “what-if” scenarios to help guide investment decisions.
Sydney Whipple, a category engineer for Ben & Jerry’s has been with the company as an intern since 2019, and was appointed as a category engineer in March of 2021. As a category engineer, she manages engineering projects for both Ben & Jerry’s factories in the state of Vermont involved in quality, safety, process efficiency, capacity, and infrastructure, and many more areas. Sydney’s favorite ice cream flavor in the winter is Phish Food, and in the summer is Cherry Garcia!
Melanie Barker
Consultant, Simulation Software
Advanced Techniques 11:00AM to 12:00PM
This session is designed to provide advanced modeling ideas with a focus on sets. Gail will cover using sets to create 3D arrays of variables and expressions, Melanie will discuss using sets to easily export your key performance indicators, and Judy will review using the Search and Remove module with sets.
Melanie has been part of the Rockwell Automation Arena team for over a decade and was an Arena user for almost another decade before she joined the team. She has done a variety of projects in the food & beverage manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality, and oil & gas industries. Her background is in industrial engineering and she has a bachelor's degree from the University of Florida and a masters degree from the University of Central Florida.
Judy Jordan
Sr. Technical Support Engineer
Judy's background is in mathematics and she has been working with the Arena product since 1998. In this role, she supports customers in trouble shooting the software in the event of any issues, as well as being an expert on the tools, software functionality, and overall simulation process. She has also worked in Website Management for the product, Product Documentation, and Product Testing.
Gail Kenny
Consultant, Simulation Software
Gail has over 27 years of experience designing simulation solutions for a wide variety of applications including military, high speed bottling, consumer packaged goods, chemical processing, oil & gas, pulp & paper, automotive, and logistics. She has also modeled a manpower planning process for a national service network, a job skills rotation plan in a production facility, promotion policies and retention of officers for the United States military, and staffing of call centers for a major financial institution.
Nathan Ivey
Senior Simulation Consultant, MOSIMTEC
Building Simulation Expertise in Your Organization 1:00PM to 2:00PM
In this session, Nathan will draw upon his simulation experience to provide tips and guidelines to help you build simulation expertise within your organization, gain buy-in from leaders, and successfully execute simulation projects.
Nathan is currently a Senior Simulation Consultant with MOSIMTEC, a consulting company with over 100 years of combined simulation experience and expertise in a wide range of industries from supply chain, food service, and pharmaceuticals to automotive, mining, and manufacturing. He has used Arena for over 20 years and was previously the manager of the Arena consulting practice for Rockwell Software, as well as, a simulation consultant. Additionally, he utilized simulation in roles at FedEx Ground & Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.
Nancy Zupick
Manager, Simulation Consulting
Arena's Newest Features 2:00PM to 3:00PM
Nancy will introduce the new features coming out in the next version of Arena Simulation. You will see the new Animation Explorer, New Reporting function, and the newest modules being released. This version will be available in late 2021. You can download the current software by visiting www.rockwellautomation.com.
Denise L. White, PhD MBA
Assistant Professor-Educator and Director – MS in Business Analytics
Challenges and Approaches to the Design of a Whole Hospital Model 3:00PM to 4:00PM
Denise White is an Assistant Professor-Educator at the University of Cincinnati (UC) where she is also the Director of the Master of Science in Business Analytics. At UC, the Center for Business Analytics partners with local companies to complete student projects that provide benefit to both the students and the organizations.
A large local hospital identified a need to develop a detailed hospital model that would allow them to understand capacity needs for each unit in the hospital. Using simulation modeling, we explore how data analysis techniques, appropriate definition of stochastic and probabilistic elements, and streamlined design can be used to develop a complete model of patient flow through a large hospital. We explore unique business challenges in managing the operations and demonstrate how to incorporate decision making based on hospital status into a simulation model.
