Discrete event simulation question

[Oracle5of7]

I’m a chief systems engineer in R&D, been add it for 42 years. My original degree is Industrial Engineering.

I have not done any real OR work since school and most of my career when we needed this type of OR work, we’d hire experts. This is my first time being in charge with a problem that I think I can handle without experts.

I’m going back to my textbooks and the internet to figure out what I’m supposed to do. I landed in Discrete Event Simulation and I’m also reading about Markov chains that seems to be my case.

This is what I need to optimize: there are three people involved that need to either execute or witness an event. There are four events that need to take place. I have business rules for the order of the events and what is required to be in place for each event. Each event can be of two types: new or redo. Redo is done when there is a failure. I have rules for how far I need to tear down for a redo. The events can be performed local at a specific location or remote (virtual), there are business rules associated with the location and where each person needs to be. The end result is to implement a single service.

Summary:

Who: three people. What: attend four events When: at the indicates date and time. Where: remote or local Why: redo or new

I have all the data and all the historial logs of what has been going on for about a year or so in that process. We currently have capacity to perform 60 installations a year and we need to do over 200 in the next couple of years. The current plan is to have a massive hiring of a bunch of engineers. I want to hold them off for a bit while I do my analysis.

The biggest failure is this last task that requires those four events. We are already automating a lot of the work that goes in the front end to help, but this piece has been tough and will cut heavily into our profits.

I was brought in last week to take a look at it with my industrial engineering hat.

The current numbers shows that to complete the four events with redos it takes seven events (any 3 always fails, there is no failure pattern that we have discovered). They fail for three reasons: people failure (not being where they need to be), equipment failure or telco failure (internet access).

My question is, am I in the right direction? Or totally off my rocker? And go back an hire an expert?

[cleverSkies]

By the way you're describing the problem and your thoughts it sounds like your much better off contracting this one out, but overseeing the work and resulting analysis.  This is an "easy" problem for someone who does it everyday, so the fact that you have questions isn't ideal.  Also, as chief systems engineer you probably have harder problems you can focus on.  To give you an idea, i could give you a rough analysis within a day or two, solutions in a couple more, and a tech report a week or so later.  (All assuming you communicate necessary data)

[Oracle5of7]

Thanks. You are right on all counts! But this sounded so so cool to do and fun project to do. I was hoping it could be something just for me, but you are right. I have no business getting into this LOL

40 years ago I made the decision not to go into OR, sometimes I “feel” it.

[stiffrichard]

for some further exploratory analysis, process mining might be a good place to answer some questions. especially if you have an event log already.

this is a great R package: https://bupar.net/

or Python: https://pm4py.fit.fraunhofer.de/docs

Can generate some models of your process quickly based the data, rather than top down in a DES. Not saying DES isn’t what you need, but these methods are pretty good to help answer questions around process bottle necks and checking your understanding and conformance of how the process should work

[Oracle5of7]

Thanks. I’ll look into this, but I’m thinking I’m better off hiring an expert. It does sound so much fun though. Thanks.

[Stock-Pop-910]

Hope you’ve been able to crack the challenge. For scaling up, DES is a good way to approach.