It's the new corporate mantra that can be heard in every board room and on every shop floor across the globe, "how do we do more with less?"

Businesses need to get smarter to survive, and in our September article we look at how General Motors has used SIMUL8 to work smarter and get back on the road to recovery. We also have all the latest SIMUL8 News and a new SIMUL8 feature announcement.

September Article

SIMUL8 helps GM on the road to recovery

The recent announcement that General Motors has returned to profit comes as no great surprise.

GM, the biggest US carmaker, has undergone a worldwide efficiency drive in the past year that has seen SIMUL8 software used in manufacturing plants from Michigan to Bangalore in a bid to work smarter and maximize efficiency.

Using SIMUL8 is a necessary step to getting back in the black for GM as it allows them to visualize their processes, quickly test new ideas to become more efficient, and ultimately improve their bottom line.

GM Holden, an Australian subsidiary of GM, uses SIMUL8 across a number of departments to assess factors like line speed, shift pattern changes, and the impact of new model introductions at their Elizabeth manufacturing plant in the south of the country.

As part of the GM efficiency drive, Joy Boath, Senior Manufacturing Engineer at GM Holden, was faced with the challenge of responding to an increase in demand without increasing the total number of hours worked on their complex General Assembly line. Joy says, "Vehicle manufacturing is a highly competitive industry, and we need to remain flexible to respond to fluctuations in demand. SIMUL8 has been a highly effective tool for us in achieving this flexibility."

GM got smart with their maintenance. They identified the critical bottlenecks in their process then adjusted uptime targets in less critical areas to allow them to prioritize maintenance activity where it had the most impact. They didn't need to add more resource, just get smarter at using what they already had.

Joy says, "We increased throughput by 5%, saved on the expense of hiring more production employees and also saved on the expense of maintenance and the purchase of extra carriers - which had been looked at by management as a way to increase production rates."

Joy and her team have a few more projects in the pipeline and you can read the full case study here.

Businesses everywhere are learning how to do more with less with a little bit of 'smart thinking'. The ability to take a step back and look at your business as a whole is a vital first step in beginning to work smarter and creating that eureka moment that can change your business.

It would be great to hear your SIMUL8 'smart thinking' examples. Tell me about your 'eureka moment' on the SIMUL8 blog.

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