Decision Making that is 100% Safe

Enterprising businesses need to safely predict the outcome of future process changes. For intrinsically complex pharmaceutical operations the outcome of even small change actions is uncertain and often impossible to quantify.

The potential negative impact to business of making the wrong decision can be high. Faced with such complexity, those delivering process excellence and adept performance improvement use synthetic environments, such as process simulators to manage these risks and accurately predict future performance. We shouldn't be surprised that they take their lead from military, flight or automotive simulators where operating costs are high and poor performance is life threatening. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our spreadsheets and rough understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose.

The impact of a poor plan on the overall business can be huge. When cause and effect are not closely related in time and when random or unpredictable effects are misinterpreted as good/bad performance, inappropriate decisions and actions inevitably follow.

It manifests itself in cycles of inventory excesses that are stubborn to breakdown. It causes a poor understanding of product demand, unbalanced capacities as the lean versus agile dilemma persists, poor production plan adherence, excessive operating costs and even lost sales.

Discrete event simulation permits the evaluation of operating performance prior to implementing or disturbing a system. Simulation helps companies become more aware of their manufacturing and supply chain dynamics and efficiencies. It permits better decisions by consideration of more operational alternatives, whilst compressing the time to such decisions. Planning cycle compression is a key driver of process improvement velocity. Simulation allows planners to challenge and set business rules, operating logic and run strategies more frequently with reduced implementation risks.

Px-SIM models are interactive operational decision making tools that are designed to help planners interpret and modify plans to drive business performance improvement.