Work Closely with your Client

Having built a more robust simulation you now need to start working more closely with your client. (In fact, with the types of software becoming available now, it is possible for all the stages above to be part of one session with the client).

It is especially important to work with the client because doing simulation is like a journey of discovery with numerous dead ends. You will try many experiments and learn a lot about the way the factory operates and could operate under different circumstances. If your client is not engaged in this journey of discovery then they will not understand how you have reached the end result. This means that implementation of anything other than an obvious solution could be difficult.

There are two key, but separate, skills in this simulation building process.

  1. Being able to use the software to build the model.
  2. Being able to design the display for a simulation that highlights the important issues to you and the client without clouding the issues with information overload.

The second of these is not easy to learn but as you read the rest of these tutorial you'll get a feel for its importance and what is likely to affect its success.

The phase above breaks down into many sub steps - we'll define them all next. This phase continues until the client feels they know what is best to do: In other words until the problem is “solved”.