Keith Knudsen ProModel Project Manager

Traditional Modeling Provides Great Benefits, But Can Do More…

Over the past 29 years, ProModel users across a spectrum of industries have demonstrated the value that modeling can bring to an organization. Just a few examples include:

• A leading manufacturer of oilfield equipment who modeled their existing location to identify ways to optimize their processes and gained a 45% throughput increase
• Shipbuilding companies that have used our traditional modeling to improve shipyard production and capacity planning
• Hospitals that have used MedModel for decades to improve patient flow.

Increasingly, however, ProModel customers are looking to extend these benefits by integrating their models with other IT systems to develop web-based decision support tools. These model-based tools utilize a ProModel engine on a server, read in live data and utilize ProModel simulation and optimization capabilities to provide forecasting, automated scenario exploration and prescriptive suggestions.

Custom Integration Amplifies The Value of a Good Model

Whether created by ProModel consultants or in-house analysts, a good model (traditional or integrated) is composed of several key elements as shown below.

1. Process Forecasting: A good model simulates an important business process in a concise way, at an appropriate level of abstraction, and provides accurate forecasting to inform key business decision making.
2. Operational Data: To the extent possible, a good model brings together real-world data (typically from several sources) that has been validated and normalized. Operational data feeds the model, but also is mined for distributions, patterns and trends that improve the model’s predictive and prescriptive fidelity.
3. Resources & Constraints: Every business process has factors which throttle its throughput – often in non-linear and sometimes unexpected ways. A good model can forecast the impact of changes to resources and other constraints.
4. Business Priorities: Providing information about business priorities allows a good model to do two things: a) predict and notify users about problems and opportunities, and b) utilize automated scenario creation and optimization to explore alternatives and seek decisions that lead to most optimal outcomes.
5. Prescriptive Analytics: A good model provides the prescriptive information to key decision makers as early as possible to support effective planning. These improved plans then feed back into the system as operational decisions and changes to resourcing, process and priorities.

Custom integrated model(s) take all of the above, integrate it with live data and makes its power available in a live, web-based format so that tactical decision-makers at all levels of the organization can utilize it. In a live integrated environment, prescriptive analytics can be provided daily or even hourly in support of near real-time decision-making.

A Growing Portfolio of Proven Custom Integration Success Stories

ProModel has now developed about half a dozen custom predictive prescriptive platforms with direct integration of the ProModel server into the customer’s operational IT environment.  Examples include:

• Shipyard Manufacturing Capacity Planning: AREAS
• Supply Chain Planning: DST
• Personnel Readiness: AST
• Hospital Patient Flow Optimization: FutureFlow Rx

AREAS capacity planning capability was featured in the Signal Magazine on page 2. The article states that Ingalls Shipbuilding estimated a potential annual cost savings of just under $1M from the use of this tool.

Benefits of Integrating Models With Live Data Systems

Benefits of a custom integration of ProModel include:

• Pulls operational data to support strategic planning on an ongoing basis
• Automatically projects “strategic what-ifs” (changes to resourcing, facilities or sales) to show true impact on “daily tactical decisions”
• Ties strategic targets to operational decisions, and continuously explores alternatives to provide early warning of opportunities and risks.

For More Information…

Contact saleshelp@promodel.com if you are interested in learning more about custom model integration.