Creating and comparing multiple simulation profiles and scenarios

Creating and comparing multiple simulation profiles and scenarios enables you to demonstrate the best solution to your team.

About this task

After running some quick simulations in the preceding section, you know that adding resources to your process results in acceptable wait times. But, it is not possible to actually increase resources for the problematic activities. Another possibility is to devise a way to categorize billing disputes so that a smaller percentage of disputes would actually require approval. In order to demonstrate the options and outcomes to the corporate automation team, you can create two separate simulation profiles for this single process:

  • One simulation profile called Current Flow to represent the current flow of disputes that require approval.
  • An additional simulation profile called Improved Flow to represent improvements gained from categorizing disputes before submission.

Procedure

Demonstrating the options and flexibility of simulation profiles and scenarios:

  1. To create the simulation profile called Current Flow, follow these steps:
    1. Open the Billing Disputes process in IBM® Process Designer.
    2. Select the Approval Required gateway in the diagram.
    3. Click Simulation in the Properties tab.
    4. Under Simulation Profile, click New to create a new profile to represent the current flow of disputes that require approval.
    5. Name the new profile Current Flow and click OK.
  2. In the Outgoing Flow Percentage area, type 60 in the Yes (Review for Approval) field.
  3. Select each activity and gateway for which you want to specify simulation values for the current flow profile.
    Note: When specifying simulation properties for each process element, be sure that the current flow profile is selected.
  4. To create the simulation profile called improved flow, follow these steps:
    1. Select the Approval Required gateway in the Billing Disputes process diagram.
    2. Click Simulation in the Properties tab.
    3. Under Simulation Profile, click New to create a new profile to represent the improved flow of disputes.
    4. Name the new profile Improved Flow and click OK.
  5. In the Outgoing Flow Percentage area, enter 30 for the Yes (Review for Approval) field.
  6. Select each activity and gateway for which you want to specify simulation values for the improved flow profile.
    Note: When specifying values in the simulation properties for each process element, be sure that the Improved Flow profile is selected.
  7. You also need to create two separate simulation scenarios so that you can run a comparative analysis. To create the first scenario, follow these steps:
    1. In IBM Process Designer, expand Processes and select Simulation Analysis Scenario from the list of components.
    2. Type Bill Disputes Current Flow in the Name field and click Finish.
    3. Click Limit process instances and type 50 in the Max instances field.
    4. Under Process Apps to Include in Analysis click the Add button and then select the process application that contains the Billing Disputes process.
    5. Under Processes to Include in Analysis click Add and then select the Billing Disputes from the list.
    6. Under Simulation Profile, click Default to display a list of simulation profiles that have been created for the billing disputes process and then select the Current Flow profile.
    7. Leave the Team Overrides section blank.
    8. Click the Save icon in the main toolbar.
  8. To create the second scenario, follow these steps:
    1. Click the plus sign next to Processes and select Simulation Analysis Scenario from the list of components.
    2. Name the scenario Bill Disputes Improved Flow and click Finish.
    3. Apply the settings from the previous scenario, except this time, choose the Improved Flow simulation profile.
    4. Click the Save icon in the main toolbar.
  9. Now you can run in simulation versus simulation mode to compare wait time, execution time, and so on.
    1. Open the Optimizer using the drop-down list at the top of IBM Process Designer.
    2. In the Analysis Scenarios view, choose Simulation vs. Simulation from the Mode list.
    3. Under Selected Scenarios, for sample A click Select and choose Bill Disputes Improved Flow from the list.
    4. For baseline B, click Select and choose Bill Disputes Current Flow from the list.
    5. In the Heatmap Settings view, change the visualization mode setting to Wait Time, using the clock time to show the average value.
    6. Click Calculate in the Analysis Scenarios view.
    The heat map shows that reducing the percentage of disputes that require approval decreases the wait time for the review for approval activity from approximately 9.5 hours to 2.5 hours.

Results

That way, you can demonstrate that reducing the percentage of disputes routed for review to 30% (it is possible to do this by adding a task and business variables to categorize disputes), improves wait times and process execution in general. The Optimizer enables you to quickly demonstrate the performance issues, plus IBM Business Process Manager enables you to quickly build and then demonstrate proposed design solutions.
Parent topic: Sample simulations