Written by Frances Sneddon on Wednesday April 11th 2012 in What We're Doing, What We're Thinking

Changing The Future of Process Improvement

It’s been a busy year preparing for the release of SIMUL8 2012, and I’m really proud that yet again we’ve released a ‘real’ upgrade, packed with new features and improvements.

As some of you might already know our vision is to get every process improver using simulation to help with decision making. We want to do this by focusing on making simulation really easy so that anyone can quickly and easily develop simulation skills. That’s always been our benchmark, to ensure we are always the easiest to use simulation tool in the market.

We are really excited about SIMUL8 2012 as it’s yet another step change in achieving our goal. With the addition of Lean Value Stream Mapping and BPMN this version is a huge leap forward in bringing the power of simulation to mainstream business process improvers.

So you might be wondering what we’ve done to move us closer to this vision, well here’s how…

Integrated BPMN and Lean

In SIMUL8 2012 we’ve integrated BPMN and Lean with SIMUL8, so now however you carry out your process improvement you can get the added value of simulation.

This is great if you’re new to simulation as you can map out your process in a way that’s familiar to you first. Then just add some process timings and some rules for how work is processed, let SIMUL8 add the real world variability and bring your process to life so you can really understand how it will perform in the real world and start making evidence based decisions.

Easy to Understand

We’re continuously trying to think of ways to make simulation easier. This not only makes it faster for new users to learn SIMUL8, but also makes the benefits of simulation clearer, which helps create buy-in within your organization.

So, with this in mind we’ve changed the names of the simulation objects. The change is really subtle but because the names of the objects now far better explain what they actually do it’s going to make it so much easier for you to learn SIMUL8 and also help you describe your simulation to others.

One of my favorite features for 2012 is our new high level analytics panel. From the first time you press ‘Run’ you are get meaningful results about your process. The results will quickly guide you to areas where there might be opportunities to improve your process. Then you can use SIMUL8’s more extended results tools to do more deeper analysis.

I’ve already seen the magic of this in action on a recent client visit. After one simulation run and seeing the results updating, everyone in the room started asking questions, what does that mean, why would that number say that, oh I didn’t know that was a bottle neck, and then moved onto generating loads of ideas for the best ways to improve their process. That’s the power of simulation, it’s not just about the simulation you build, or about looking at the results to understand the dynamics of your process, it’s all the interactive conversations that happen as a result that’s the most valuable and exciting part.

We really hope you like the new features! By making these changes we’re confident that even more users will be benefitting from simulation driven process improvement soon.

I’d love to hear your feedback on SIMUL8 2012, just get in touch and let us know your thoughts.

Still want to find out more?

Come along to our SIMUL8 2012 webinar? Whether you’re already a user, or just want to find out more, we have a webinar for you.