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Improvement of Business Processes with Simulation Models
Today our work consists of a large number of complex processes which take place in parallel and interactively. Therefore it is often hard to find the criteria and parameters needed to achieve the best possible solutions for upcoming decisions on expansions, resource allocations etc. This is all the more true because in many cases the processes are described only very vaguely.
Even if process managers are experts in their respective fields of work, it is difficult for them to answer detailed questions about the performance of, e.g., business processes, logistic processes or production processes. Examples of such questions are:
If such questions are not answered well, unnecessary costs occur which often are hard to evaluate straight away and whose avoidability is not obvious. The resources melt away, so to speak, between the fingers. Unfortunately the situation is very often analyzed more exactly only if increasing costs start to destroy the business, or when the competition performs much better.
With the simulation tool PACE, and given adequate effort, it is possible to examine and improve your processes and their synchronization, to recognize weak points and to fully exploit improvement potentials. The costs of such analysis are almost always substantially lower than the attainable savings.
Quotations on the topic
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you are doing.
W. Edwards Deming
Inventor of Quality Control
Forecasts are difficult, particularly if they concern the future.
Mark Twain
Risks are difficult to manage since they require decisions which have to do with events in the future and our forecasting powers are very weak.
EuRatio Akademie Zürich
An enterprise is not a state but a process.
Ludwig Bölkow
Simulation is the key technology of the new millennium, with expected growth rates of 20% per annum.
Stanford Research Institute