SIMUL8 Feature Tour - Results
Successful analysis of your simulation results is key to your project. SIMUL8 provides extensive results automatically in a variety of formats to give you the results you need to make informed decisions.
Results Manager
All your results are now accessible from the Results Manager. Putting all the results at your finger tips makes it so much easier to perform in depth analysis of your simulations.
All results are categorized and organized in a tree allowing you to quickly navigate all your results and add them to configurable report displays.
 This feature is only available with SIMUL8 Professional
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Object Results
The results facilities in SIMUL8 enable you to collect and review measures of performance for all simulation objects.
Any results that have a graph icon beside them can be summarized in visual form (pie charts, histograms etc.). The raw data used to produce the graphs can be copied to clipboard. All graphs are dockable on the main simulation window.
Work Entry Point Results:
Storage Bin Results:
Work Center Results:
Work Exit Point Results:
Resource Results:
Conveyor Results:
Tanks Results:
Process Results:
Vehicle Results:
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Object Groups Results
By placing simulation objects in a Group collective results for these objects can be obtained.
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Results Summary
The results summary shows a collection of results that you want to be able to see together at the end of each simulation run or trial.
Only trial results include confidence intervals. Run results display the average only.
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Formatable Results Summary
You can add any result from the Result Summary to the Result Tab of the Dashboard, and then use the formatting tools to customize the display, change the order of items and add additional text. You hide columns so you don’t need to see SIMUL8’s name for the results if you don’t want to.
You can set this to be displayed at the end of a trial instead of the results summary.
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Warm Up Time
The warm up time is the time that a simulation will run before starting to collect results. This allows the queues and other aspects in the simulation to get into conditions which are typical of normal running conditions in the system you are modeling.
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Results Collection Period
The results collection period is how long the simulation should run before automatically stopping while collecting results. The simulation will not start to collect results until the warm up period is finished.
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Trials
The purpose of a trial is to check the reliability of results. At the end of just one run you have simulated one week in your organization. You have a result which is from one week. Just like real life, that could have been an average week, or a bad week, or a good week. We have no way of knowing what sort of week it was unless we run a few more of them
A trial is a series of runs of the simulation model which are performed with the all the same parameters in the simulation except for the random numbers.
A trial gives you information about how variable the weeks are and how accurate you can expect your results to be.
The base random number stream can be changed if you want to make two trials, but use different random numbers for the two trials. The actual random number stream sets used for the first run in the trial is the base set, this is incremented for each run in the trial.
The results at the end of a trial include 95 or 99% confidence interval with the Standard Edition. With the Professional edition you also get the options of 80% 90% 98% 99.8% and 99.9%. This means SIMUL8 displays the average result but also provides a range of confidence for this result. So SIMUL8 says its 95/99% confidence the average will lie in this range and will most likely the average will be the result reported.
When a Trial has completed you can extend it to a new number of runs to increase the accuracy, narrow confidence limits, without the need to re-run the previously executed runs.
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Trial Calculator
There has been lots of research into a variety of different methods on how to work out the right number of runs to do in a trial to get accurate results. We've teamed up with Dr Katy Hoad and Professor Stewart Robinson of Warwick University to review these methods and develop an optimum approach. Having completed their extensive research their algorithm has now been incorporated into SIMUL8.
It's so simple to use. You just tell SIMUL8 the result you're most interested in and then SIMUL8 automatically does the rest.
Visit Warwick University Research Site for more details.
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Results History
Results data from every run, or every Trial, you conduct are stored in the Results Comparison table.
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Results Export
Any result collected in SIMUL8 can be exported directly into Excel or Minitab automatically. Using the file option results can be sent to files of any type.
The export to MiniTab allows automated regression of the results variables.
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Results Templates Export
SIMUL8 can automatically write results out to a Microsoft Word, Excel or Power Point Templates. You tell SIMUL8 what data you want exported and at the end of every run or a trial SIMUL8 exports to the location you specify in the word document.
This feature is only available with SIMUL8 Professional
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Results Segregation
Some storage bin or work exit point results can be segregated by label value.
For example, you have attached to your work items an label called illness that has a number of different values depending on what is to happen to a patient in a hospital you might want to choose this label to segregate results so that you can see how long patients of different categories spend in the hospital.
When you look at the individual results dialogs at the end of a model run you see a combo box which lets you select ALL (for results across all categories) or select a value (each label value which has occurred will appear here). If you select a category then the results in that part of the dialog box apply to that category only.
You can add categorized results to the results summary.
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Time Graphs
Time graphs give a visual insight into the performance of part of a simulation.
A time graph of the number of items in a storage bin can, for example, show you patterns in a queue size, or indicate if the simulation will never reach a steady state (if the queue size is increasing more-or-less continuously).
Time Graphs are available individually for most simulation objects and Time Graphs from a number of different simulation objects can be combined to enable you to see the total amount of work going in the whole (or some subset) of your simulated system.
The raw data used to produce the graphs can be copied to clipboard.
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Business Graphs
Graphs of any results in SIMUL8 can be constructed using SIMUL8's internal spreadsheets in the same way you create graphs in Excel.
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Detailed Log
The Detailed Results Logging feature compiles into a single spreadsheet the time any work item spends between any two points.
Set as many logging areas as you like. Logging starts at either the entry or exit from any object.
You can also add to the results spreadsheet label vales from the work items and cost information.
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Gantt Chart
Gantt Charts provide a understanding of the interaction between different parts of your simulation. It provides an attention grabbing view across the whole of your simulation run that allows you to examine when what has happened. You can zoom in on short time periods and select a subset of the simulation objects to view.
Gatt Charts show you a time based view of what was happening to, for example, resources when a queue of your customers was forming, or what breakdowns had a critical impact on parts delivery, or what work centers were blocked during different shifts, or what resources are OK on average but causing stock outs during critical peak times.
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Optimization
Simulation is great for evaluating proposed decisions but it can't help to uncover the "right decisions" to evaluate.
OptQuest for SIMUL8 enables the user to find the best answer to the "what-if" questions in their simulations. They can quickly determine what combination of variables results in achieving their objectives.
Answers to such questions require examination of multiple scenarios. Each scenario requiring some modification to your simulation model. To investigate every possible scenario can be very time consuming. Knowing what decision scenarios should be investigated makes this task far more effective.
OptQuest for SIMUL8 lets the user specify a variety of relationships to determine the optimal decisions.
Based on SIMUL8's outputs OptQuest for SIMUL8 measures the merit of the inputs that were fed into the simulation. On the basis of both current and past evaluations, the optimization procedure decides upon a new set of input values.
The process continues until an appropriate termination criterion is satisfied (usually based on the user's preference for the amount of time to be devoted to the search).
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Profit and Loss Accounts
SIMUL8 can display an interactive Profit and Loss statement for each simulation and has options to set overhead cost and external revenues etc. that are needed to calculate the bottom line profit.
The interactive statement lets you "drill down" to discover the source of costs or revenue. And any elements of the statement can be added to the main Results Summary. This means the financial implications of a changed simulation are directly displayed along with any non financial performance measures you need for decision making.
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Swimlane Results Collection / Actual vs. Elapsed Time
This feature reports the average, minimum and maximum for both working time and waiting time for work items across the entire simulation and optionally across each Group, or swimlane, of simulation objects.
The report is also broken down by "Work Type". Work Type is the general label in SIMUL8 used to distinguish between different types of work. Create a label called "Work Type" and set it to values to have the report add an extra row for each value of Work Type.
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Confidence Intervals
See Trials.
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Non Empty State
Some times you might not want your simulation to start its run completely empty, for example you may have current stock levels or backlogs. You can tell SIMUL8 to place work items into storage bins whenever the simulation is reset (put back to time zero).
You can specify which type of work items this storage bin is to be initialized with and how many of the work items should be placed here. You can also set the value of the labels on the work items placed in the storage bin.
Start Up quantities can be omitted from reported statistics if you want.
See also Warm Up Time.
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Interval Results
Many results are now by interval. You can specify the Start and End time of the interval giving you complete flexibility to get exactly the result you want.
- Get Contents Change - Returns the change in a Tanks Contents.
- Get Throughput - Returns the number of Work Items that have passed through a Work Complete Point or the throughput of a Tank.
- Get Levels in Percentages - For Tanks and Queues returns the percentage of time empty and full. For Resources returns whether there were Resources available or not.
- Get States in Percentages - Returns the percentage of time a Work Center spent in each state, e.g. time working, time waiting.
- Get Percent Utilization over Interval - Returns the utilization of a Resource.
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Customizable Charts
Define your own charts:
- Ability to chart any expression on a time series chart.
- Chart multiple series on one chart.
Flexibility to customize their display:
- Change the chart type (bar, line, step, pie etc.).
- Choose between a 2D and 3D display.
- Display grid lines.
- Choose colors for backgrounds, graph lines and chart data.
- Display point labels.
- Display a data table.
- Option to fix axis scales rather than redraw so can specify min and max, SIMUL8 will resize if data goes out with bounds.
- Define axis labels
- Add constant lines such as upper and lower bounds.
Ability to Use Chart Image:
- Print charts.
- Copy to chart to clipboard as image.
This feature is only available with SIMUL8 Professional
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Resource Results by Work Center
Get the time each resource has spent at each work center being, split by use type if required.
This feature is only available with SIMUL8 Professional
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Resource Traveling Results
See exactly how much time a resource has spent traveling between different objects.
This feature is only available with SIMUL8 Professional
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Sensitivity Analysis
Automatically analyze any distributions to see the simulation results that are sensitive to these distributions and by how much.
This feature is only available with SIMUL8 Professional
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Scenario Manager
Run a large number of Trials or Runs automatically with any number of configurations of any properties or variables.
For example
This feature is only available with SIMUL8 Professional
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Input Your Own Random Number Generator
SIMUL8’s internal random number generator can be replaced by any random number generator you like.
You just need to supply a DLL to generate the numbers based on commands from SIMUL8. Example code for a simply generator supplied. Complete source code also provided and compiled DLL for a Mersenne Twister generator (the “generator for the 21 st century” with cycle over 2 19000).
This feature is only available with SIMUL8 Professional
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