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What's the Problem? by Claire Worthington I’m a lecturer in Lancashire Business School at University of Central Lancashire and I use a SIMUL8 Site License to teach an option to our final year undergraduate and Masters students. I’ve been at SIMUL8 Corporation’s Scottish office as part of a sabbatical exchange program that SIMUL8 runs. I’ve enjoyed seeing how the SIMUL8 is supported, developed and used in practice. I’ve taken my turn on the help desk and as my time here comes to an end got to thinking about what I had learned and whether there were similarities with what I've experienced in the classroom. Each time I come to the end of a simulation course I feel that what I’ve said most is …. yes, but what’s the problem? Students want their simulation to work, and often forget that the purpose is to investigate a problem – or perhaps they want me to forget! At SIMUL8 it’s different; the problem is the focus for people sending questions to Support or requesting training, development or consulting. But when a simulation isn’t working as you want, then your questions are the same… What’s the problem ….. with my simulation? I can usually find the glitch in a student’s simulation but here my tactic of choice is ‘consult an expert’. If a simulation doesn’t produce the desired performance levels my students like to alter things or cheat. It's too tempting to change a Work Center's distribution type or its average time, or to leave patients and customers in clinics and banks overnight, or select the days that give good results. And when I object, their reaction is: What’s the problem? – Reality is. But whose version of reality? Mine of course, I’m doing the grading! But we can get too close, or too familiar with a situation and not see where changes are possible. So it probably is worth considering if there’s a process that can be omitted or a new machine that works 6 times faster or … but they’ve not convinced me that there’s ever a time to pick and choose which sets of results to use! Then there’s how big is Reality – ideally a simulation should be as simple as possible, just enough detail to generate the outputs and performance measures. My students’ approach is to build a game with as much detail as possible and while it’s not good for them (they run out of time) again, it isn’t always the wrong thing to do. There’s a balance to be struck between what’s necessary for the user to feel familiar enough with the simulation to trust it and the simulation being unnecessarily large and difficult to construct. But don’t expect SIMUL8 to provide the limit. The size and scope of the things that you get SIMUL8 to do, is amazing. So the answer to the problems....
........................is YES. Here is a list of the most common problems I've come across both in teaching and working on the helpdesk. Zero in ???. (Why do my students like to set things to zero?)
Spot checks and Quick fixes
On the trail
Widening the search
Whether you are a new to SIMUL8 or an experienced user, why not come and join us at our SIMUL8 Workshop in London on the 1st July. Existing User? New to Simulation?
For more information or to sign up please visit our website. If you have any questions generated from, or comments about this
newsletter then email Newsletter@SIMUL8.com
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