Huntsville Utilities Improves Call Center Performance
 "ProModel understood our requirements and provided an outstanding solution which helped us reach national phone center standards we had never before met in our history."
John Olshefski, VP Customer Care Huntsville Utilities
Huntsville Utilities, a city owned utilities company in Huntsville Alabama, provides water, gas and electricity to over 180,000 customers covering 330,000 meters in Madison County and parts of Marshall and Limestone. Huntsville Utilities maintains a call center staff of over 31 personnel. The Utility was not satisfied with their level of call center customer service. They wanted a tool that would allow them to take into consideration various skill levels for different queues, and other options, like part-time and wheel scheduling in an experimental way. They wanted to test these options before changes were implemented on the call center floor.
The call center supervisor revealed improved statistics including 95.74% of calls were answered in less than 60 seconds and that the call center has maintained an average abandoned call rate of 1.1% since implementing the changes recommend by the simulation project. Because of these improvements and others, the simulation generated eighty thousand dollars in actual savings for an ROI of 300% for Huntsville Utilities.
Check out the full story here in our online library.
Seattle Children’s Implements FutureFlow Rx™ for Improved Patient Flow
 Seattle Children’s has successfully implemented our new FutureFlow Rx™ predictive patient flow technology.
Members of the Enterprise Analytics Community at Seattle Children’s will be presenting their use case at the Advanced Analytics for Children’s Hospitals Conference on June 5-6 at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Seattle Children’s is a co-sponsor of this new analytics conference.
Seattle Children’s, like many other hospitals, faces challenges associated with capacity pressures and inpatient access. Demand for inpatient space often outstrips capacity, whether for physical or staffed beds.
SC leadership has established policy that scheduled elective surgeries must not be canceled due to capacity. Therefore, proactively managing inpatient capacity and staffing takes on even greater urgency in that context. In order to address this issue, they deployed FutureFlow Rx, a predictive-analytics solution for census estimation.
Here is what they have to say about FutureFlow Rx™
"By providing accurate projections of staffing needs, FutureFlow Rx informs daily challenges faced by every hospital with timely and detailed information."
Susan Geiduschek, RN, DNP, Sr. Dir, Assoc. Chief Nurse, Seattle Children's Hospital
“Integrating FutureFlow Rx into our Inpatient Access and Flow work streams has really supported a smooth, functional, and most importantly effective process for proactively managing census during an especially challenging flu season. Diversions are down, and so is the general level of anxiety around decision-making. Fewer ad hoc huddles, more standard work with established guiderails and actions.”
Ruth McDonald, MD, Assoc. Chief Medical Officer, Seattle Children’s Hospital
Read the full Press Release Learn More about FutureFlow Rx™
Training Top
We just launched a completely revised on-line Process Simulator Essentials video course. This is available in the Solutions Café to anyone who has a current Process Simulator maintenance and support contract and is available for purchase if you do not. If you would like to purchase, please contact your Account Manager.
Products
 - Capacity Planning Platform for Shipyards
"The new tool has taken a process that historically took 10 weeks to complete and can now finish the scheduling activity in less than an hour.
Following project completion and full system implementation, Ingalls expects to reduce 'real estate' allocation processing time by 30% and place 20 more units 'under cover' annually, with an estimated cost savings of over 990K dollars per year."
— Article from theSignal
Shipbuilding is a long and highly complex process, presenting shipyards with multiple challenges including:
- Multiple hull configurations / multiple vessels under construction simultaneously
- Limited space greatly impacted by changes in schedules and fabrication plans
- Labor intensive planning activities
- Need to reduce operational expenses
To help shipyards with these challenges ProModel launched Shipyard AI.
Shipyard AI is a multi-user, “web” enabled application (limited by roles and rights) that uses an optimization-based automated capacity planner to create and publish laydown maps and a schedule indicating where items are to be located over time.
It provides shipyards with unrivaled flexibility and planning capability, enabling management and key stakeholders to visualize multiple production scenarios, analyze potential results and optimize decision making.
Learn More about Shipyard AI
We were excited to release our new, redesigned Process Simulator 2019 earlier this year. This version of Process Simulator supports both 32- and 64-bit editions of Microsoft Visio 2016 and 2019.
So What Else is New?
Import / Export via Microsoft Excel
Model information is exportable to Excel not only to view it all in one place but also to modify it and import it back into Process Simulator. Model building and management is easier than ever before.
Localization and Internationalization
Process Simulator now supports internationalization or numeric separators, including date and time. Additionally, we now have localization for English, German, Portuguese, and Spanish languages.
Activity Multi-Entity Table
This functionality allows you to convert your existing models that use multi entity, and create new ones as well, without having to code the functionality using logic. In Shape Properties you can select Multi Entity and then Define.
Dockable Windows
We have redesigned all element property windows and tables and made them dockable within the Visio application workspace. This allows you to keep them open and out of the way so your diagram view space will be clear for quicker modeling changes.
Learn More
Publications Top
Predictive Variables, Artificial Neural Networks and Discrete Event Simulation in Manufacturing
By Rebecca Santos, ProModel
 During my Master’s program at BYU, I worked with a team to complete my thesis. The work turned into a published article by the International Journal of Modelling and Simulation. Since I work for ProModel, it’s only appropriate that I share it with my fellow simulation enthusiasts.
Here is the abstract from the article:
This research used a discrete event simulation to create data on a shipment receiving process instead of using historical records on the process. The simulation was used to create records with different inputs and operating conditions and the resulting overall elapsed time for the overall process.
he resulting records were used to create a set of predictive artificial neural network models that predicted elapsed time based on the process characteristics. Then, the connection weight approach was used to determine the relative importance of the input variables. The connection weight approach was applied in three different steps:
(1) On all input variables to identify predictive and non-predictive inputs
(2) On all predictive inputs and
(3) After removal of a dominating predictive input.
This produced a clearer picture of the relative importance of input variables on the outcome variable than applying the connection weight approach once.
See Rebecca’s Blog Post for more details
Academic Top
University of Texas Master of Public Health Program Teaches Lean Concepts With Process Simulator
By Professor Michael Kennedy University of Texas
 After I arrived in January 2017 at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler to begin teaching in our Master of Public Health Program, I decided to revise my approach to teaching quality.”
Simulation modeling is a wonderful tool to reinforce concepts from statistics and probability such as the effects of random variation, practical application of probability distributions, and employment of goodness-of-fit testing.
“I was first exposed to ProModel simulation products as an alternative to GPSS-H when earning my doctorate in Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic University from 1988 – 1992. I taught one simulation course as a graduate elective for the U.S. Army-Baylor University Graduate Program in Healthcare Administration soon after graduation. Since then, I have employed MedModel as a component of several health administration courses, with simulation comprising approximately one-third of the course content.
After I arrived in January 2017 at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler to begin teaching in our Master of Public Health Program, I decided to revise my approach to teaching quality.
My decision to include Lean in the quality course provided the opportunity to learn and teach Process Simulator, another ProModel product. Process Simulator operates as an add-in to Visio. I couldn’t think of a better way to teach flow than to have students build process flow diagrams in Visio and then to model the flow of entities through the system using Process Simulator. The revised course proceeded as follows:
For the complete article visit the ProModel Blog and read “Univ. Texas Master of Public Health Program Teaches Lean Concepts With Process Simulator”
Learn More about the ProModel Academic Program
To learn more about the academic program, please visit our website at https://www.promodel.com/industries/academic.
If you’re interested in joining the growing ranks of ProModel educators or have any questions, please contact us at education@promodel.com to apply for a full professional license for academic use.
Tips and Tricks Top
One of our more popular tips is how to change the size of a Visio Drawing Page for use with Process Simulator – Check it out here on our YouTube Channel.
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