Over the past twenty some years I have been involved in many simulation projects.  I thought it would be fun to hand out a few awards….  I’d be interested to hear about your projects, the good, the bad, and the ugly…..

Most Tedious - Mass Transit Railroad model in Hong Kong.  I spent three weeks collecting data in the Hong Kong subway system to feed a model that was used to estimate the amount of time necessary to evacuate their busiest station in an emergency.  It was a pretty cool model but collecting data on the movement of humans in and around the station was a little mind numbing.

Most Unusual- This project was for a Finnish company that was selling the equipment to build aluminum framed pre-fab houses.  We created a model to optimize the sequence for processing orders to maximize throughput.  The unusual part was all of the trig to assemble various standard pieces into different truss formations.  At heart it was a scheduling model but in the end, the visualization of the truss formation allowed the company to communicate their vision to potential customers

Most Frustrating - Sometimes simulations are built because someone has the money.  The problem is sometimes you don’t know this going in.  I built a model for an automotive body shop.  They were having problems with throughput.  The bottom line was there were two competing ideas how to resolve the throughput problem.  A new conveyor section and a new turntable.  The simulation showed that either one would suffice and there was really no difference between the ideas.  In the end, the customer decided to do both since there was room in the budget.  This was completely unneccessary and 100% automotive in the 1990’s. 

Most Useful - Sometimes models live longer than you expect.  We have been working with a heavy truck manufacturer over the past 11 years.  We have a working model of their paint shop that has been used at least once a year to resolve scheduling issues, plan for process changes, and evaluating potential capital plans.  When we first built the model we had no idea how many times we would revisit it.  I guess the lesson is to build every model like it will last forever.

Most Intricate - One of the most difficult models I ever built was the strike up operations for a planned cargo ship.  The model involved forklifts that could drive anywhere on the ship and rode elevators to get between levels.  The ship was organized into three hold, five decks, and four quadrants per room.  The cargo was located in an X,Y location within the quardrant.  I developed algorithms to drive the vehicle anywhere on the ship in 3D and avoid other obstacles.  The main goal was to estimate the time for the strike up operations.  As the rooms became more and more empty, it was possible to take a more direct path to the next piece of cargo.

Most Unorganized - One of the first projects I worked on was for an automotive general assembly shop.  We had weekly meetings on the design of the various sub-systems.  Each week I would get layout changes and new concepts for simulation.  Inevitably, I would build models for a week and when I showed up at the weekly meetings, the layouts had changed completely and anything I had from a simulation perspective was irrelevant.  After this happened four times, I stopped building models until something stayed the same for at least two weeks.

Share your unique project stories using the ”comment” box below…..