A simulation model provides good answers to “what if..” questions only when the source or input data are trustworthy. It’s clear; simulation can not produce good answers from false entry data. One has to prove the quality and consistency of the data, before feeding a simulation model with it.
Deterministic or stochastic data
It is recommended that the historic data comes from proven deterministic data sources such as company data bases. In case such data is missing, it will be approximated with one of the probability functions such as Norm, Gamma and tens of others. These allow achieving a close match between the expected data sets and the generated ones.
Firm’s operational data
Simulation projects should benefit from the already available data in a firm. Currently, it is a common practice that firms collect daily operational data in their databases, using a propriety management system ERP, such as SAP, Oracle and many others. This data helps to share and coordinate their activities among their employees, departments and management. Computer simulation engineers use this operational data in order to quickly initialize computer models with the current conditions in the firm: current order data, shop floor setup, WIP, machine and product positions, buffer levels and many more. This also makes each simulation project faster and easier to conduct, because fewer parameters are entered manually before each simulation run.
SAP component
Extracting data from SAP may be a tedious task. Data resides in SAP in multiple data tables. Data is usually stored in a way that only some propriety SAP applications know how to use it. In order to use the existing data for another application (i.e. simulation model) it is required that the data is extracted and checked for redundancy, completeness and consistency. This process has to be automated in order to be effective.
For this reason we have designed a SAP component in SimulateFirst, which guarantes 100% cleansed input data from SAP. It provides synergy for the customer via reuse current and historic data from other SAP applications.
We can deploy it and customize it in mater of hours. Thanks to its phased and modular approach its implementation is trouble free.
Data interface for simulation
Every simulation model has a data interface for transferring data to and from the simulation tool. The data interface has all the parameters for the machines, layout, orders, etc. in the simulation model. It may connect to an external data source to get the up to date data automatically.
A decent tool for building user interfaces, which we often use on our projects, is the popular Microsoft Excel. It is widely known for spreadsheet calculations and it offers VBA macro for flexible macro programming. An interface can also be a standalone application that is programmed in a computer language (.NET).
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