Analyzing aggregated results Perform aggregated analyses to gain an understanding of the behavior of the simulation run as a whole. Aggregated analyses are the most broadly scoped of the dynamic analyses. They use all the data from the entire simulation run for their information.
You need to run a simulation based on a process that you have modeled before you can do an aggregated analysis.
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Analyzing process cases You can perform several types of process case analysis to determine the performance of a simulated process across all of its process instances. Process case analysis provides statistical information that takes into account all process cases and their probabilities of occurrence.
You need to run a simulation based on a process that you have modeled before you can do a process case analysis.
A process case is a form that a process instance can take, in which units of work follow a particular pattern of connections and activities within a branching process flow. Process case analyses show weighted average values for the results of simulated processes, where the average value is weighted for each process case to account for the distribution of process instances to that case relative to other cases.
You can use process cases analysis when you want to examine process-level data that is gathered from all process instances in a simulation, in order to understand how a process performs when it is run a large number of times. Process cases analysis organizes and averages the simulation results generated for each process case, which enables you to investigate variations in performance between different patterns of process flow. As a result of these investigations, you may determine that you need to modify a process model to improve the overall results or the results for one or more cases. In addition to results for each case, process cases analysis also provides weighted average results that take all cases into account.
By comparison, aggregated analysis enables you to examine results for specific elements within a process (aggregated across all process instances in a simulation without consideration of case matching), and process instance analysis enables you to examine results within a specific process instance. Process comparison analysis is related to process cases analysis in that it compares the weighted average results for two distinct simulation runs.
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Analyzing process instances Perform process instance analysis to get a detailed understanding of each individual pass through a process during simulation.
Before you carry out a process instance analysis, you must have a set of simulation results that you want to analyze. The first process instance analysis you must carry out is a process instance summary analysis. You can then access the additional process instance analyses from the results page of the summary.
During simulation, every pass through the process creates a process instance, and the data from that pass is recorded for analysis. Use process instance analysis when you want to study the results of a specific process instance. The value of doing this is that it enables you to examine how the process works on a process run level. For example, in simulation of the handling of calls at a call center, you can examine the call with the best or the worst results for elapsed duration or total cost to determine the factors that contributed to those results and to identify potential improvements.
Process instance analysis is the most granular of analysis types and can be used to gain an understanding of how each run through the process occurred during simulation.
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Perform one of the several comparative analyses to find differences and similarities between the results of two different simulation runs.
Perform one of the several comparative analyses to find differences and similarities between the results of two different simulation runs.
Before performing this analysis you must have two simulation results that you want to compare. For the following comparisons, which are intended to highlight differences in how a process performs when simulation settings are changes, both results must come from the same simulation snapshot:
- Processes Resources Time Comparison
- Processes Resources Cost Comparison
- Processes Classifier Duration Comparison
- Processes Classifier Cost Comparison
The other comparisons can be carried out against any two results in the same project.
Use processes comparison analysis to highlight differences in simulation results between versions of a modeled process, simulations of different sizes, or among simulations with different decision probabilities. For example, you can use processes comparison analysis to compare the average length of time it takes to complete your as-isprocess versus your proposed to-be processes. When you make changes to a process to optimize cost or throughput performance, you may want to perform several types of comparison analysis to confirm that your intended optimizations are realized, and that there are no unwanted side effects.
The average values presented by the comparison analysis are identical to those presented by the process cases analyses.
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- Analyzing activity durations
The activity duration analysis shows the average time it takes for each activity in a simulation to complete. It also indicates how much of that time is taken waiting for resources to be available.
You can use this analysis to determine which activities in a process require the longest durations to complete. After identifying these activities, you may then decide to streamline these activities, or to add more resources to reduce delay durations and elapsed durations.
- Analyzing activity costs
Perform this analysis to gain an understanding of the costs incurred by the activities during a simulation run.
This analysis enables you to determine where in a process the most money is spent or earned. You can also determine the relative importance of expenses that result from the inherent cost of completing each activity, from resource costs, or from delay time while waiting for resources to become available. By understanding where costs and revenues are generated throughout the process, you can identify potential areas for improving revenues or reducing costs.
- Analyzing activity cost per time unit
Perform this analysis to compute the average rate of cost for each activity in a simulated process.
Use this analysis to answer questions such as "how much is this costing us per day?" for each activity in a process. Activities that have the highest costs per unit of time are often the best candidates for streamlining or even eliminating from a process. An example of one way you can use this analysis is to determine the cost per day of running a plant, to help decide whether to keep the plant open or to close it.
- Analyzing activity statistics
Perform this analysis to obtain information on the successful completion of the process activities in the simulation run.
Use this analysis when you run high volume simulation runs to determine the overall success or failure of the process and its activities. If an activity instance fails to complete, it is a possible indication of a problem with the process model, or with the underlying process itself. By understanding which activities have the highest number of failures or the greatest rate of failure, you can decide where to focus your efforts to improve the process. You may determine, for example, that more resources need to be made available to enable more of a certain activity to succeed, or that the process flow should be changed so that activities are performed in sequence rather than in parallel paths.
- Analyzing activity resource allocations
The activity resource allocation analysis shows a summary of the resources allocated to each activity during the process simulation run. For each activity, the analysis shows the resources allocated and the average allocation time, cost, and shortages for each resource.
Use this analysis as a tool in resource planning. It specifies what resources are allocated to what activities, at what cost, and for how long (including any shortage duration). Information provided by this analysis can help you to trace the costs reported by the contributions that each resource makes to each activity.
- Analyzing resource allocation summaries
The resource allocation summary analysis provides summary information regarding the usage of resources in fulfilling the resource and roll requirements of the process during simulation. In contrast to other analyses, the information in this analysis does not focus on the activity or process case as the primary category of organization. Instead, it aggregates based on the role and resource requirements that exist in the process as a whole.
This analysis organizes its information based on the resource and role requirements of the process. As a result, if a resource is used both to fulfill an explicit resource requirement and to fulfil a role requirement, then those two uses will be recorded separately.
Use this analysis to understand how the resources in your model are being used to fulfil the role and resource requirements during simulation.
- Analyzing resource usage summaries
The resource usage summary analysis provides aggregated summary information for each resource that came into use during a simulation run. In contrast to other analyses, the resource usage summary provides information about resource usage without associating the uses with the activities in the model.
Use this analysis to understand which bulk and individual resources are being used or are sitting idle during a process' run and to get a high-level picture of the costs associated with their use.
- Analyzing resource usage
Perform a resource usage analysis to see the activities that each resource was allocated to during the simulation run. For each resource, the analysis shows summary information about its time, cost, and shortage durations. The analysis also provides detailed information about every allocation of the resource during the run of the simulation.
Use this analysis to help in resource planning, as it enables you to see how each resource is allocated to different activities across the process. In addition to showing how a resource uses its time to accomplish one or more activities, this analysis shows which resources are prone to shortages and which activities they delay as a result. You can use this information to determine where additional resources are required.
- Analyzing classifier cost and duration
Perform this analysis to display information regarding the average cost and duration of an entire classification of activities within the process.
- Analyzing net present value and internal rate of return
Perform the net present value and internal rate of return analysis to calculate the current net present value of a process. When running the analysis you are asked to specify an initial cost, a discount rate, and a payback period. These values are used together with the average profit for the process as a whole, calculated from the simulation results. This analysis also calculates the internal rate of return necessary to produce a net present value of zero by the end of the payback period.
- Analyzing the break even point
Perform a process break even analysis to calculate the number of times a process must run to generate enough profit to recover a fixed cost that you specify. The returned value is based on the average costs and revenue for the process as a whole.
- Analyzing process resource allocations
Perform a process resource allocation analysis to examine how each activity in the process makes use of its resources during the simulation, to help identify resource shortages, and understand how the resources required by an activity contribute to the cost of performing the activity itself.
Use this analysis to help understand how the resources required for each activity contribute to the performance of the process as a whole. The information in this analysis provides additional detail to the information available in the Process Cases Summary analysis, and lets you identify which resources are delaying a particular task or are contributing to its cost. After reviewing the information that this analysis presents, you might decide that you need to make additional resources available. You might also decide to gain a more granular understanding of a particular process case and carry out a process instance resource allocation analysis to see how the resource information breaks down for each individual pass through the process.
- Analyzing process resources
Perform a process resource analysis to see a list of the resources used by the process and information about the average allocations of the resources during a process run.
Use this analysis to obtain summary information about the average use of the process resources by the process a whole. The information in this analysis can be used to supplement the information in the Process Cases Summary analysis, and lets you identify if there are resources that appear to be overused, or unavailable for the process. For a more granular understanding of how specific activities make use of resources during the running of a process, perform a Process Resource Allocation analysis.
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- Analyzing process cases summaries
Perform this analysis to display summary information for each of the process cases produced during a simulation.
Use this analysis when you want an overview of the process cases generated in a simulation. This analysis provides high level summary information for each process case, including duration and cost information and indicates whether the process case reached a successful completion or not. It lists the activities that make up each case and, when possible, quantifies their average cost and average elapsed duration. By selecting a process case in the analysis view, you can highlight the paths of that process cases in the Simulation view.
This analysis, like other process case analyses, may reveal unexpected results within specific process cases. For example, you may determine that the average duration in a particular process case is unacceptably high. As a result of reviewing the information that this analysis presents, you may decide that you need to modify a process model or reset resource levels, or you may determine that you want to investigate further with another type of process case analysis or process instance analysis. Alternatively, you may investigate the reasons that cause a particular process case to fail.
- Customizing the columns displayed in summary analysis
Customize the summary analysis display to show only the columns with information that you are interested in.
- Analyzing process durations
Perform a process duration analysis to examine the average durations of all process cases in a simulation.
Use this analysis when you want to examine process level processing durations and throughputs for each of the process cases that the simulation generates. This analysis, like other process case analyses, may reveal unexpected results within specific process cases. For example, you may determine that the average throughput in a particular process case is unacceptably low. As a result of reviewing the information that this analysis presents, you may decide that you need to modify a process model or reset resource levels, or you may determine that you want to investigate further with another type of process case analysis such as process resource analysis. Alternatively, you can examine the duration results for specific process instances within a process case by running the process instance summary analysis and then the process instance time analysis.
- Analyzing process activities total times
Perform a process activities total time analysis to determine the average total time values for all process instances in a simulation.
Total time refers to the amount of time spent on each process case during the run of the simulation. It is the total duration of all activities that make up the process case. Process activities total time includes the durations of all the activities in the process excluding subprocesses and loops.
This analysis, like other process case analyses, may reveal unexpected results within specific process cases. For example, you may determine that the amount of time spent following a specific path of the process model is unacceptably high. As a result of reviewing the information that this analysis presents, you may decide that you need to modify a process model or reset resource levels, or you may determine that you want to investigate further with another type of process case analysis such as process resource analysis. Alternatively, you can examine the duration results for specific process instances within a process case by running the process instance summary analysis and then the process instance time analysis.
- Analyzing process costs
Performing a process cost analysis to examine the average costs, revenues and profits for all process instances in a simulation.
Use this analysis when you want to examine process level costs and revenues for each generated process case. This analysis, like other process case analyses, may reveal unexpected results within specific process cases. For example, you may determine that the average profit in a particular process case is unacceptably low. As a result of reviewing the information that this analysis presents, you may decide that you need to modify a process model. You can also examine the cost results for specific process instances within a process case by running the process instance summary analysis and then the process instance cost analysis.
- Analyzing classifier costs and durations
You can complete this analysis to show the costs and durations of activities associated with each classifier value used in a process.
Related reference
Process cases summary analysis
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- Creating a process instance summary analysis
You must carry out a process instance summary analysis before you can carry out any analyses on specific process instances.
By displaying summary information for each process instance, this analysis enables you to quickly determine which process instances have results that you might want to investigate further using the other available process instance analyses. For example, you might want a deeper understanding of the most process instances making up the most frequently followed process case. Alternatively, you might decide to investigate one of the process instances that has the longest elapsed duration, to determine the reason why the process instance took so long to complete. Or you might decide to investigate the process instances that have the highest total cost. You could also examine process instances that have start times within different periods, if you want to examine how the process performs at different times of the day, the week, or the year.
- Customizing the columns displayed in summary analysis
Customize the summary analysis display to show only the columns with information that you are interested in.
- Analyzing process instance times
Perform a process instance time analysis to display the durations of each of the activities involved in a process instance.
This analysis enables you to pinpoint the activities in a process instance that fail or that contribute the most to the total elapsed duration of the process instance. One reason for identifying these activities is to focus your efforts on reducing their durations in order to improve the overall performance of the process.
In addition to performing this analysis, you could also perform a process resource allocation analysis if you want to investigate waiting times associated with allocating resources.
- Analyzing process instance costs
Perform this analysis to display detailed information about the cost and revenue for each activity within a process instance in a simulation.
This analysis enables you to pinpoint the activities in a process instance that fail or that have the highest costs or the lowest revenues. By identifying these activities, you can focus your efforts on improving the revenue or reducing cost to improve the overall cost performance of the process.
In addition to performing this analysis, you could also perform a process resource allocation analysis if you want to investigate why waiting costs are incurred.
- Analyzing process instance resource allocation
Perform a process instance resource allocation analysis to obtain detailed information about the resources allocated to activities in a process instance.
This analysis enables you to examine costs and durations associated with the allocation of resources within a process instance. Based on this information, you may choose to adjust the overall quantity of resources available, or adjust the scheduling of resources. For example, if an activity has a shortage duration of eight hours while waiting for a technician to start the morning shift, or if an activity fails because a resource was not available within an acceptable period of time, you could add an additional shift to the existing schedule, and move existing or new resources to that shift.
- Analyzing process instance activities free float
Perform this analysis to display information about the available free float (slack time) periods associated with activities in a process instance.
- Analyzing process instance critical paths
Perform a process instance critical path analysis to display the path of longest duration within the process instance.
The critical path includes the activities in a process instance that contribute to the total elapsed duration of the process instance. Other parallel paths require less time to complete. By identifying the activities on the critical path, you can focus your efforts on reducing their durations in order to improve the overall performance of the process. These efforts could include examining the process model itself, or performing process instance resource allocation analysis to investigate whether costs and durations can be reduced by adjusting resource levels.
- Analyzing process instance shortest paths
Perform a process instance shortest path analysis to display the path in a process instance that has the shortest duration of all parallel paths.
Identifying the shortest path can be useful in setting a target for improving overall process performance. If you can implement improvements that reduce the duration of other parallel paths to match the duration of the shortest path, overall process performance will be at an optimum. Alternatively, you may determine that you can add an additional activity on the shortest path or adjust resource levels without affecting the overall performance of the process.
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To do a comparison analysis, complete the following steps:
- In the Project Tree view, right-click the first simulation result that you want to analyze, and then select and then one of the following choices:
- Processes Duration Comparison
- Processes Activities Total Time Comparison
- Processes Cost Comparison
- Processes NPV / IRR Comparison
- Processes Break Even Comparison
- Processes Resources Time Comparison
- Processes Resources Cost Comparison
- Processes Classifier Duration Comparison
- Processes Classifier Cost Comparison
A window opens.
- Select the second simulation results that you want to compare with the first results you selected and then click OK.
- Select the type of process instances you want to include in the analysis:
- Succeeded process instances only
- Failed process instances only
- All process instances
- If you selected the processes NPV / IRR comparison, complete the following steps in the window that appears:
- Specify the Initial cost of the process, and optionally select a currency.
- In the Number of process runs per year field, specify the number of times you expect the process to run within a single year. For example, enter 5000 to specify that the calculation will be based on an assumption that the process will running five thousand times each year.
- In the Number of years field, specify the number of years you want the analysis to cover. For example, enter 2 to determine results based on two years of operation as the payback period.
- Enter the Annual discount rate. For example, enter 10 to specify a discount rate of ten percent.
- Click Finish.
- If you selected the processes break even comparison, complete the following steps in the window that appears:
- In the Process Volume field, enter the number of times you want to use as the estimated number of times the process will run in a given unit of time. Then, select the unit of time to use from the Time unit drop-down list. For example, if you want to estimate that the process will run 5 times each hour, select Process volume to 5 and Time unit to hour.
- In the Initial cost field, enter the fixed cost value that you want to recover and select a currency type from the drop-down list.
- Click Finish.
Now, you can view the results of the analysis in the Analysis view. You can also print a report of the results.
- Processes duration comparison analysis
Processes duration comparison analysis compares the average duration and throughput of two processes based on the results of their simulation runs.
Use this analysis to compare the overall duration results of two process simulation runs.
- Processes activities total time comparison analysis
Processes activities total time comparison analysis compares the average duration of two processes based on the results of their simulation runs.
Use this analysis to compare the overall duration results of two process simulation runs.
- Processes cost comparison analysis
Processes cost comparison analysis compares the average cost and revenue results for two sets of process simulation results.
You can use this analysis to compare cost and revenue results two processes simulations.
- Processes NPV and IRR comparison analysis
Processes NPV and IRR comparison analysis compares process net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR) analysis results for two process simulations that use the same input parameters.
- Processes break even comparison analysis
Processes break even comparison analysis compares the break even analysis results of two process simulations.
- Processes resources time comparison analysis
Processes resources time comparison analysis compares the average resource allocation durations for two simulation results based on the same simulation snapshot. They can be results from different profiles, or two sets of results from the same profile.
You can use this analysis to compare the average resource allocation durations of two simulation results sets from the same simulation snapshot. This lets you compare how different simulation profile settings can affect the average resource or role allocation time for your process.
- Processes resources cost comparison analysis
Processes resources cost comparison analysis compares the average resource allocation costs for two simulation results based on the same simulation snapshot. They can be results from different profiles, or two sets of results from the same profile.
You can use this analysis to compare the average resource costs of two simulation results sets from the same simulation snapshot. This lets you compare how different simulation profile settings can affect the average resource or role allocation cost for your process.
- Processes classifier duration comparison analysis
Processes classifier duration comparison analysis compares the average classifier elapsed duration results for two process simulations that use the same input parameters.
- Processes classifier cost comparison analysis
Processes classifier cost comparison analysis compares the average classifier cost results for two process simulations that use the same input parameters.
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