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Companies spend lots of time and effort defining vision and mission for their organizations.  These are important to ensure that teams are aligned with its direction and that everyone clearly understands where they are going as a company.  While vision and strategy are important, companies often ignore the most critical question:  “Why?”  Why do we do what we do?

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.

At Rockwell Automation, we get the opportunity to talk with many companies about their use of Arena® simulation software.  Regardless of the industry, we see a lot of commonality in the ways organizations apply discrete event simulation software.  Many companies utilize simulation software because they have a specific and immediate problem to be solved.  These problems tend to “strategic” and are designed to answer big-picture challenges related to the direction of the business.  Discrete event simulation software is an excellent tool to address these sorts of strategic challenges.  However, once they have completed the project and presented their results, regular day-to-day responsibilities take priority and the simulation software is often placed on the shelf until another strategic challenge arises that calls for simulation.  While this type of one-off problem solving generates significant ROI, to focus only on these strategic challenges limits the benefits from discrete event simulation to your organization.