October Newsletter

SIMUL8 Tricks of the trade - not just for the experts

  

Training the new draft of SIMUL8 graduates this month we realized there are a lot of little things that the 'experts' do when creating simulations that can help make life easier for new users.

So, in this newsletter we've asked our resident SIMUL8 gurus to give us their 8 top tips for successful simulation to help new users of the software, and our SIMUL8 graduates! We also have news of a SIMUL8 office move and Gartner's top technologies for 2011
 

October Article

Top tips for successful simulation
 

Our SIMUL8 experts tell us their top 8 tips to successful simulation.

What's your top tip for the rookie user? Share your tips on the SIMUL8 blog.

  1. Know what the objective of the simulation is and ask yourself,  'What is the problem I'm trying
    to solve?' If you don't have a question to answer your simulation will drift and lose focus.
  2. Think about the KPIs you will be measuring. Each of the KPIs needs to add to the understanding of the problem. Also, think about a combination of KPIs to capture underlying behavior in your simulation.
  3. Keep it simple. Start small and high level and only do the detail if you need to. The aim of simulation is to help you make a business decision. If you clutter the simulation with all the complexity of the real world you lose clarity.
  4. How your simulation looks is just as important as what it does technically, the visual display can be a result in itself. Spend a bit of time on using visual cues to tell the story of the simulation.
  5. Always save a new version of your simulation after making a key change. It's a simple step but can save so much time as you can revert back to your original quickly to test a different approach.
  6. Make one change at a time and test how this change affects the behavior of the simulation. Making several changes at once will make it very hard to trace what change has made the difference to the simulation, good or bad!
  7. SIMUL8 is known for its very fast run times, so if your simulation takes longer than a minute to run then it's too slow, and that's stopping you from running experiments quickly to test new ideas. Check out this SIMUL8 blog post for a few tips.
  8. Pay attention to the SIMUL8 Assistant, it gives great advice!

What would your top tip be? Tell us about it on the SIMUL8 Blog.

Need some extra help with your simulation? Ask the experts in our user forum, the SIMUL8 Cafe.

 

SIMUL8 News

        

European Office is Grade A

The SIMUL8 European team has moved in to their new Headquarters.

The team had outgrown the old residence and with more recruits on the way it was time to find a new home.

After an exhaustive search the historic, Grade A listed, Cochrane House in Glasgow was selected.

This is a fantastic move for the guys and we look forward to visiting soon!

   

Gartner tips simulation as key to success

Gartner has once again highlighted simulation as a top strategic technology for business success.

Gartner analysts point to the ability to 'predict the future outcomes' of actions with simulation as the key to 'unlocking significant business improvements'.

This is great news for simulation users as we're already ahead of the game, and it's great to see the benefits of simulation being recognized for mainstream business applications.

Read the full story on the SIMUL8 blog

If you have a topic you would like to see covered or if you have any feedback on the SIMUL8 newsletter, please get in touch.

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