Boston Scientific saves $150,000 with SIMUL8

Simulation of manufacturing line to identify areas of inefficiency.
"Using SIMUL8 we could visualize the production line and actually see queues building up in our process. From this we tested various scenarios to improve efficiency resulting in savings of nearly $150,000" James Larson, Principal Industrial Engineer, Boston Scientific

Key Benefits

Offset the cost of direct labor for a saving of $150,000.
Transformed static spreadsheet results into visual simulation of process.
Identified key areas of improvement.
Demonstrated production line in development mode.

Project Summary

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Historically Boston Scientific has used spreadsheets to model capacity of some of their production lines. This provided them with static results but couldn’t give them an indication of the areas to address for improvement. The spreadsheets also couldn’t take into account real life variability, for example when the time to process work is slightly different each time that process is run, and this meant the results were inaccurate and didn’t match the real life system.

In an attempt to clearly identify the areas of inefficiency in their cardiac battery manufacturing line, SIMUL8 software was used to create a simulation of the production process that allowed engineers to visualize the line being run. This added a new dimension to the spreadsheet, and a new level of accuracy to the data that showed a queue build up at the backfill process on the line that wasn’t identified in the spreadsheet analysis.

This discovery was key to adding time limits and strategic WIP to counteract the work flowing into the next process that offset the cost of direct labor to manage the inventories for a saving of approximately $150,000.