Michigan Simulation User Group

This great Friday Tip will show you how to easily find where your particular resource has been assigned, it’s really useful for when you have a complex simulation.

Once your resource is on the screen if you hold the left mouse button down when over a resource icon, you will highlight all of the Work Centers in your simulation to which that particular resource has been assigned.

Plus, you can use the ‘FIND’ function in the advanced options for any resource in order to display a list of all of the locations within your simulation where that resource may be utilized.

Watch this video to see how to do it.

We hope you find this tip useful!

David Jones, CEO, discusses the use of simulation as a BPM tool

There are few cities as exciting as Las Vegas. With the bright lights, luxurious hotels and 5 star restaurants, there really is something for everyone. Now, before any rumors start, we’re going for business not pleasure, but we know we’ll enjoy ourselves at this year’s  Society for Health Systems (SHS) Conference that’s going to be held at The Mirage Hotel from Feb 18-20.

This event will focus on the best ways to improve processes in healthcare systems. As you already know, at SIMUL8 Corporation we pride ourselves on producing world renowned dynamic, innovative simulation software that improves processes, so attending this conference is a great opportunity to showcase our work. Plus, our very own Claire Cordeaux and Fiona Lindsay will be presenting a poster on ‘making simulation easy to use’ in the Exhibit Hall.

With SIMUL8’s aim to improve software and simulation development to overcome barriers for use in healthcare, our poster describes the methods we have developed to try and bridge the gap. The topic chosen for this year’s poster is heavily aligned with both our aim, and the aim of SHS; to tackle healthcare industry problems and advance healthcare systems.

Improving healthcare means identifying trade-offs between resource utilization, waiting times, operating costs and the quality of care. This year’s conference gives us the opportunity to explore and share best practices in quality, productivity and efficiency for healthcare industry decision makers.

So while everyone else may be gambling their savings away in Vegas we get to show how discrete event simulation allows healthcare administrators to experiment with solutions without putting patients at risk and can manage more complexity than the traditionally used spreadsheet analysis. Who’s the winner now?

 

 

 

Lanner consultant John Beadsmoore looks back at the different projects he has worked on in 2011 and what WITNESS 12 will bring to 2012

If you read our blog you’ll already know about our great new product, SIMUL8 Basic. Basic is ideal for those looking to improve processes and reduce costs with simple and easy to get started software. SIMUL8 Basic was designed to guide users through building simulations easily, meaning users can get started in minutes.

Now, since the launch of our new product we’ve had a few questions from our Standard users and we’d like to take the opportunity to answer your most frequently asked question here, on our blog.

If you’re currently a SIMUL8 Standard customer, don’t worry, you’ll still be supported in the near future, and if you’re on an annual maintenance plan you’ll continue to receive upgrades.

Because we love our customers so much, and we want to keep everyone in the loop, we have a dedicated FAQ page on our website. If you want to know more our FAQ’s provide answers on what SIMUL8 Basic means for you. If there’s something we’ve missed, please let us know.

Oh and there’s more, yep we are that good! If you’re a Standard customer and would like to upgrade to SIMUL8 Professional to add a completely new dimension to your simulation modeling, we are currently offering all Standard customers the option to upgrade for a special discounted price of $1,995 (normally $3,995). Don’t say we’re not good to you!

 

 

Yes, we’ve said it before but we’ll say it again; the SIMUL8 support team are dedicated to continuously improving our software. Need proof? Well even between new releases, we regularly offer free service packs for the latest version of our software. Now, you may be wondering, what’s a service pack?

Service packs include all kinds of exciting new features. For example, the latest service pack lets you open your run time results charts straight from the ribbon rather than the old way of having to go through the results dialog. Let us know if there are any other features you’d like to see directly on the ribbon for easy access and we’ll add it to a future service pack for you.

Don’t miss out on these new features and subscribe to our notification service and receive an update that a new service pack is released.

To check which build you are on now, open SIMUL8 and go to the Help/About menu. The latest build is 2484. If you are on an earlier version it’s definitely worthwhile updating your software here by following the instructions. Remember to check the box to receive a notification when a new service pack is released!

Lanner Consultant Steve Jones discusses the importance of an improved user interface

Did you know that when creating a label you can write a ‘Memo’ that will link to that label and display a text description when that label is hovered over in a contents list? This is really handy for remembering what different label value represents or when handing a simulation over to colleagues.

Check out this step by step guide on how to do it!

1. .Go to ‘Actions’ to create your ‘Label

2. Enter your label name

3. Click ‘Memo’ and type a description of your label

4. Once you’ve created your simulation, and you want to check the contents of your storage bin, and what work items are in it click on ‘Contents’ on the advanced tab of your storage bin.

5. When you view the contents of your storage bin, you can hover over item of the storage bin to view your memo.

As a product director, I always enjoy bringing new products to market and so I am very pleased to introduce the latest version of Lanner's flagship simulation platform, WITNESS 12.

David Jones, CEO, takes a look at what 2012 has in store for Lanner and its customers

We end the week with a new guest blogger, BPM Consultant Ralph Sayers, who showcases how Lanner software really can be applied to model virtually any situation – in this instance a project involving a Pharmacy Drive-Thru located on Florida's MacDill Air Force Base.

Lanner Consultant Craig Clee explains how Modules are much more than a simple folder

At the beginning of the year, most people start their diets, hit the gym and pledge to stick to their new year’s resolutions. At SIMUL8 we’ve made some changes of our own, which don’t involve limiting yourself. As you may already know, every year we improve our software to give our customers the very best, but before SIMUL8 2011 changes we’re going back to basics.

With that said, we’d like to introduce SIMUL8 Basic; the simplest simulation tool on the market.

SIMUL8 Basic is ideal for those looking to improve processes and reduce costs with simple and easy to get started software. SIMUL8 Basic guides you through building your simulation, meaning you can get started in minutes. No experience is required, so you can get the answers you need right away!

What brought upon this change you ask? Well, I guess it’s best to start at the beginning; in 1994 SIMUL8 revolutionized the market by transforming simulation from a technically complex task to something that could be used by people from any skill set.

So, keeping the beginner user in mind our team developed SIMUL8 Basic to let anyone get started, even if you have no previous knowledge of simulation.

That’s not to say that our other software isn’t easy to use, but SIMUL8 Basic offers all the features you need to get started. At SIMUL8, our goal is to make the benefits of simulation supported decision making accessible to mainstream computer users, and that begins with SIMUL8 Basic.

The paddle helps you to quickly build a simulation.

To access the paddle simply drag a Work Entry Point, Storage Bin or Work Center onto the screen. Providing the paddle is enabled you will notice four blue triangles around the item you placed on screen. Clicking on an arrow will open the paddle in that direction, inside the paddle icons.

In order to turn your paddle on, click FILE, then PREFERENCES, OPTIONS and from there you will see a table with paddle options, simple check the ON box to turn it on.

Once you’ve done that, clicking an icon will add a new item (Work Entry Point, Storage Bin (queue) or Work Center – depending on the icon you click) in the direction you have selected. By default items will be linked together and the paddle will jump to the newly added item. The image below illustrates this flow.

Paddle Options

Certain behavior of this feature can be modified from the simulation windows right click menu.

On: Allows the paddle to be turned off and on.

Link Items: This setting determines whether new items will be linked the parent (paddle) item using routing arrows. If switched off, imagine the step 3 of the above image with no arrow linking the two items.

Open New Items Paddle: This setting determines if the paddle will jump to the newly added item, illustrated in the above image. When switched off the paddle will remain open on the original item.

Holding the CTRL key while clicking will toggle your current ‘Open New Items Paddle’ setting, this allows you to quickly change new item creation modes without the need of going into a menu.

Wishing a warm welcome to Lanner's first Guest Blogger for 2012!

Lanner CEO David Jones takes a look back at 2011 and wishes everyone a Happy Holiday

BPM Director Geoff Hook rounds up another successful Winter Simulation Conference for Lanner

SIMUL8 has many keyboard shortcuts that can save you a lot of time. This week our Friday tip is a collection of keyboard shortcuts that will allow you to access the lists in your simulation quickly.

This is really great if you need to see certain list items at a glance. From these lists you can also access each item to make changes.

CTRL+ALT+I – images

CTRL+ALT+L – labels

CTRL+D – distributions

CTRL+I – information store

SHIFT+CTRL+G – groups

SHIFT+CTRL+L – links

CTRL+ALT+D – Custom dialogs

If you have any other shortcuts you use all the time – comment and let us know and we’ll include them in a future Friday tip.

Geoff Hook discusses the benefits of adopting a BPM philosophy

December has been a busy month, we’ve just come back from our Automotive Users Group in Michigan and now we’re in the sunnier location of Phoenix, Arizona for Wintersim 2011.

The Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) is the premier international forum for discussing the latest developments and research in simulation.

In addition to the technical program WSC also gives simulation practitioners, researchers, and vendors working in all disciplines in industry, service, and academic sectors the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas. The theme for WSC 2011 is “Simulation for a Sustainable World.”

We’ve had a lot happening during the conference, with an evening session and two talks on the applications of simulation.

Details of both these talks are below, so if you didn’t have a chance to catch up at Wintersim, or would like more info on either of these then contact me and I’ll be happy to give you more info.

SIMUL8 has its Head in the Cloud

SIMUL8 was created to make simulation accessible to all and we’re continuing that mission by taking simulation to the cloud.

During our presentation we gave attendees the opportunity to find out about the latest developments in SIMUL8 2011 and how cloud technology can help them make better decisions.

Making Simulation Accessible to Healthcare Users

Our Healthcare team have developed Healthcare specific products aimed at answering important questions in Healthcare.

During the session we discussed the tools that we’ve created to make healthcare simulation accessible and discussed how to engage healthcare audiences using simulation.