Michigan Simulation User Group

Results matter, and, in the immortal words of Albert Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” That’s why the ability to test out different scenarios with simulation is so important in getting the right results, and keeping us sane! But when you get results how do you visualize them?

With so many options to visualize and analyze results these days, Craig Kemp, SIMUL8 intern, raises some interesting questions and new ideas in our August article “Words divide, pictures unite“. We also have all the latest SIMUL8 News, the results of our survey competition, and a special offer to speed up your simulations.

Read the full newsletter here

Do you have an idea for improving your business but are too afraid to put it into action? What if you could test out the changes first to make sure your good idea is a great one? With SIMUL8 software, that’s exactly what you can do.

Join us for the ‘Why SIMUL8?’ webinar tomorrow and we’ll show you how you can answer questions like:
- What if I needed to reduce costs but retain service levels?
- What if customer demand increased, could my system cope?
- What if I could visualize the bottlenecks in my process?

Ever get the feeling that you are suffering from a data overload?

Ok, let me set the scene, I recently built a model, ran it, modified it, ran it again, tweaked it a bit, ran…you get the idea. So anyway, I am now sitting here staring at results from 10 key runs, with 3 KPIs each. That’s 30 individual pieces of data staring back at me. Which run and model set-up is optimum? Well, where do I start? Run 7 had excellent Throughput, but the Resources were very underutilized, run 3 had good Throughput and used the Resources well too, but then so did run 9…

I decided to turn my attention to visualization. I exported my data to a visualization package and created a scatter plot to compare each run, the x-axis, the y-axis and the size of the plot on the graph all corresponding to one of my KPIs. This allowed me to have a visual display of all my results without getting overwhelmed.

With data visualization being such a ‘hot topic’ these days, and even being reported on mainstream news shows earlier this month, it got me thinking about how data visualization could play a role in the development of discrete event simulation data, in particular, how we can visualize our results to cope with the masses of data that are produced at the end of each run, and then allow visualizations to provide us with an even deeper understanding of our models.

How do you visualize your results? Bar charts, Line graphs, maybe Radar graphs? Or maybe none at all!

It would be great to hear about your visual solutions, why not send them in?

In order to ensure that customers across the globe are able to learn about the benefits of simulation in their own language, SIMUL8 Corporation works with training partners to offer localized training courses. Our first authorized Spanish training provider was INTELI8 based in Quito, Ecuador.

INTELI8 Ecuador offers training and support to all Spanish speaking countries in Latin America, working with an impressive list of top academic institutions using SIMUL8 for teaching purposes. To support their work, INTELI8 have also developed a fully localized SIMUL8 exercise workbook and a Spanish resource guide for their SIMUL8 Basic Training course.

Esteban Sansur Holguín, CEO of INTELI8 says “We have been introducing SIMUL8 here in Ecuador to Academic Customers since this is a great way to show SIMUL8’s advantages to future commercial users of the software. We have seen excellent results using this strategy since students go on to suggest using SIMUL8 to their companies for making business process improvements.”

Through user groups and training sessions the Scenario Generator team noticed that lots of healthcare users of Scenario Generator were modeling alternative solutions to managing urgent care.

Due to this common interest in a particular modeling theme, last week SIMUL8 held a webinar for interested users. The session examined the most recent research evidence for what works in urgent care pathways. It also provided examples of how the scenarios discussed in the evidence could be modeled using simulation to show the impact of such changes.

The feedback from this session was very encouraging.  David Gilding from NHS Nottinghamshire County said:

 ”Still reeling a bit about the scope of what you covered and the details in terms of how they were modeled. As always – I am impressed by how high level modeling questions are turned into scenarios; you make it look easy!”

We are really pleased that users found the session worthwhile and following this we are planning on arranging more discussions. Our thoughts for the next Webinar is to discuss the issues surrounding Long Term Conditions and the modeling implications of this.

Please let us know if you are interested or have other suggestions for topics that would be useful to you.

The webinar presentation can be found on the User Forum and the models  are up on the User Pathway section of the Scenario Generator website www.scenario-generator.com

As thousands of jobs are cut within NHS Scotland, SIMUL8 Corporation demonstrate how Scenario Generator software has helped over 85% of PCT’s in England ensure that their remaining staff is not burdened with ‘excessive workloads’.

Scotland’s Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, meets NHS board heads and the BMA this week to examine the impact of the reduced staffing levels announced in June this year. Ms Sturgeon told the Press Association that:

“It is my job to ensure the NHS delivers the best quality of care, manages the financial challenges facing it and takes the right decisions now to secure services in the future.”

Mark Elder, CEO of SIMUL8 Corporation, the company which develops Scenario Generator says. “This is exactly what we are here for – providing tools that let teams quickly test out the effect of proposed changes in the health service, visualising the impact it will have in years ahead within seconds. The NHS needs to change to cope with the budget cuts, but the cost and risk of trying out ideas slows down what needs to be happening now – simulations remove that problem.”

SIMUL8 Corporation’s Scenario Generator software was developed in collaboration with the NHS Institute to provide a way to simulate care pathways, staffing levels and quality of care scenarios within the NHS.

Bedfordshire PCT used Scenario Generator to create a “virtual PCT” that quickly simulated many possible scenarios and found one that not only saved them £1.5m every year, but was agreed by all the medical staff to be just as good, if not better for patients than the current solution.

Dr Nick Gaunt from the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement says; “This kind of software really comes into its own as healthcare organisations plan for the current financial climate”.

SIMUL8 have recently finished making Scenario Generator work with data specifically related to Scotland, offering Scottish organisations the chance to see the benefits that so many English PCTs have already discovered.

Two Fridays ago we asked you to send us your most used keyboard shortcuts in SIMUL8 and you did! If you missed it, you can read the others here.

• F11 – Open/Close QuickView
• Ctrl+Alt+W – Open the Watch Window.
• Ctrl+Alt – If SIMUL8 is processing a section of Visual Logic this stops the execution and opens the Visual Logic window.
• Ctrl+Left Mouse Click on Show Spreadsheet button – Lets you set the spreadsheet to be displayed when the button is clicked.

The E-health awards celebrate IT innovation in healthcare, and this year SIMUL8 Corporation’s Scenario Generator software has been selected as a finalist in the ‘Healthcare IT product innovation’.

“Healthcare IT has always benefited from a strong relationship between provider organisations and suppliers to generate new products that bring benefits for patients.” E-Health Media

SIMUL8 are delighted to be nominated for such a prestigious award. The winners will be announced at the award ceremony in October, so we’ll keep you posted.

SIMUL8 have been offering hints and tips on Lean Manufacturing in our newsletter for over five years now! Back in 2005 we offered a tutorial on using SIMUL8 to experiment with Lean techniques to improve efficiency – we’ve updated it since then and you can find it here on SIMUL8.com. More recently we’ve added some new information, case studies and more to help make it easy to improve your manufacturing processes using Lean and SIMUL8. Check out our Lean Manufacturing pages and let us know what you think.

Claire Cordeaux, Lead for Healthcare at SIMUL8 Corporation, has been invited to speak at the ‘Transforming Capacity Planning (A European and Local Comparison) Conference’ on the 27th July.

The Conference invites academics to join with expert industrialist supporters to define a future direction for healthcare capacity planning and is being chaired by the ‘Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre’ (HaCIRIC).

Cordeaux says, ‘This is a great opportunity to showcase the fantastic work that is taking place with SIMUL8 and SG, and how both can be used to meet the new targets set out by the Government proposals.’

SIMUL8 Corporation products – SIMUL8 and Scenario Generator (SG) – are used extensively in the NHS in the UK to assist in the development lasting solutions to meet expanding demand while controlling rising costs, and improving productivity.

To coincide with the conference, SIMUL8 Corporation are offering a ‘software and training package’ to healthcare providers in the UK to help to meet the new Government targets.

The package will give providers a copy of SIMUL8 Professional, the industry standard simulation software package, together with training and support for one year for £5,995 (normally £6,995) until the September 29th, 2010. Click here for more details or contact Claire Cordeaux to discuss your requirements.

Read more on SIMUL8 in Healthcare

If you flip an unbiased coin ten times and get 3 heads and 7 tails you could assume from this that the next time you flip a coin you only have a three in ten (30%) chance of the coin landing on heads. This, as everyone would know, is completely untrue.

Taking the simple example of the flipping of a coin as detailed above and making it more complex you can end up with something like the ‘healthcare chance calculator’ found on the BBC news website

The calculator samples from a distribution to determine whether a patient lives or dies following an operation. If you are unlucky you might end up with 20 hospitals that have an unacceptable rating (based on the number of deaths that occur). This is all down to how the coin falls determining the result for each patient.
In real life we can’t rewind and start again. The hospital which has a high number of people dying will be branded as unacceptable and will presumably have action taken against it. In this situation the hospital may not have had complete control over this outcome.

If we were able to rewind and start again using the same figures a patient who died may live. All of a sudden the hospital is sitting clear of the unacceptable category. So what has changed? The doctors are skilled the same (and are still as good), the patient has the same chance of dying – it’s just that chance has flipped its coin and this time the patient survived.

So how does this relate to simulation? Running a simulation once is exactly the same as clicking the ‘calculator’ once. You may be lucky and your hospital is acceptable, you may be unlucky and find yourself on the end of an investigation. We need to run a simulation multiple times to remove the aspect of the model that is purely influenced by chance – leaving us only with the true outcome of the model. So identify your key results, add them to the results summary and run a trial made up of many runs – you wouldn’t want to leave anything down to chance!

We’re updating our Transport and Logistics features in SIMUL8 and this is your chance to get involved.

Click here to complete our short survey and enter your details for your chance to win an iPod touch.

This survey has been compiled by Bukola Bamidele, who is currently interning at our UK headquarters.

Our Support and Web teams are working together to develop brand new resources for our SIMUL8 Education license customers in time for term restarting. If there is anything you’d like to see included, use the form below to let us know.
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