Manufacturing Process Analysis

Even in state-of-the-art practices such as Industry 4.0 and 5.0, simulation is specified as one of the 9 critical arms. Incidentally, it is the only arm that talks about the future and ultimately that’s what matters to decision makers. The developed world is fully committed to using simulation as a mandatory decision support tool and this practice will soon become de facto even in developing countries.

To learn how to make rational, informed and data driven decisions, the modern manager has to be able to evaluate all his possible courses of action and decide wisely. Which is what this course will prepare you for.

• Learn how to design, simulate and analyse a functional process in a virtual environment.
• Learn how to evaluate multiple scenarios simultaneously and quickly reach the correct solution.
• Learn how to analyse existing processes and how to improve them in terms of output, time and money.
• Learn how to extract and visualise information on performance metrics.
• Learn how to understand complex inter-connectivity between departments and processes and the effect of one’s performance on the other.

While CXOs may not actually use the software and models themselves, it can be very useful for them to understand everything that is possible in simulation. Essentially, they can then instruct middle management and end users which ideas and thoughts they should evaluate for them and what kind of reports and insights they want generated. Besides, of the various studies across departments and processes that can be conducted across his organisation, they are the ones who have to decide the priorities of which simulation will happen earliest. Long term planning horizons  ( 1 -5 years ) are their responsibility and can be effectively evaluated using simulation.

Being responsible for medium term planning ( 1-4 quarters ) and also being the conduit between the front end and upper management is an arduous task. Managers of this level can be both users of these simulation models as well as instructors to junior personnel on planning options. Either way a good understanding of modelling and simulation is critical.

This week and this month and getting plans, schedules and alternative operating procedures as well as continuously looking for ways to improve running processes is what Junior management will use simulation for.

Teaching engineering and management students the skill of system thinking is both necessary and difficult. Simulation is by far the best technique to prepare students to be good decision makers as they enter their professional careers.

While most courses are useful to engineering and management students, only this course can give them a head-start on understanding how Business Processes succeed or fail.