Case studies

The world’s largest companies use data analytics to increase their revenue and keep up with the changing business world. But how does data science relate to simulation modeling, and what are the cases for the implementation of this interaction, primarily concerning value for the business? The United Services Automobile Association (USAA), a Fortune 500 group of companies, has answered these questions with real-life solutions.

Cell therapy is a fast-growing industry with many unique and complicated manufacturing processes. One stem cell producer wanted to develop the product without expensive and life-endangering delays. To do this, they contracted two consultants to create a digital twin for maximizing clean room utilization and identifying bottlenecks.

A warehouse in Thailand was encountering difficulties because of a number of complicated processes involved in their logistics and storage systems. In order to overcome these and achieve more efficient warehouse operations, EPIC InnoLabs was contracted to develop a forecasting simulation model. This model would be used to predict system behavior based on a number of inputs as well as retrieve the expected values of selected KPIs.

The BNSF Railway Company is one of the largest freight railroad networks in the United States. The company has 32,500 miles of track in 28 states and three Canadian provinces, and more than 8,000 locomotives. Expanding the company’s existing facilities, and developing new facilities in intermodal segments, would require making large capital investments. To help evaluate various options of capacity expansion in major facilities, and make data-informed decisions, BNSF developed container terminal simulation models of the Corwith and Hobart facilities.

Intel factories used a particular type of equipment that often broke down, which caused capacity constraints. These expensive parts were used in critical factory operations, and the repairs took significant time, so it was necessary to have extra spare parts on hand to avoid downtimes. Broken parts caused constraints at some of the factories while other factories over purchased spares.

The European Institute for Energy Research constructed a digital twin that can be compared with the real world. The simulation investigated how the proportion of locally generated and used energy can be increased by intelligently controlling the generation and consumption of electricity and heat.

Saudi Arabia's healthcare system was changing, and authorities needed to find a new solution to manage their primary healthcare centers. Using AnyLogic, Lean Business Services created a simulation model to better plan and manage hospital and healthcare capacity. As a result, Lean optimized the healthcare system, improving how resources were used and making patient visits more comfortable.

Fracking is the process of cracking rocks using a combination of sand and water at high pressure to release trapped gas. Tecpetrol needed to optimize sand transportation for their fracking operations from various warehouses. They could do this best using a simulation model with a parameter variation experiment and then a simulation experiment. In the first 8 months of implementing this model, Eurystic saved an estimated $500,000.

In 2008 there were three huge companies in the telecommunications market in Argentina. Each company wanted to enter the markets that they hadn’t covered yet, but the consequences of such actions had to be estimated. That’s why Telefónica decided to employ Continente Siete, a consulting company, to build a model of the market using AnyLogic multimethod simulation software.

The NIH campus is huge and consists of many buildings, including 30 parking garages. Over 12,000 vehicles enter this campus on an average day, meaning that route optimization for road traffic and well-designed parking garages are essential to ensuring that this is an effectively run center. Mosimtec designed a model that would allow NIH to visualize the layout of road networks and parking garages as well as analyze data to plan their new parking garages and road networks to determine the best design for them.