A Friendly Face for Reengineering

Dave Andrews

Companies dedicated to continuous process improvement should investigate ProcessModel, a Windows 95 application for reenginering your business. The program combines a simulation engine from ProModel (Orem, UT), a vendor of simulation software for manufacturing, and the user-friendly flowcharting interface of Micrografx ABC FlowCharter. The result is an easy-to-use program that lets you model an environment's processes (including such things as cost of goods and employee labor per hour) and then run a simulation that uses live animation. You can also compare different scenarios to predict the effect of a process change.

I found ProcessModel's interface (see the screen) easy to learn. As you create the model, you fill in a series of tabbed dialog boxes that ass ign resource costs to various activities. Within minutes, I created a working model of a typical work-flow scenario and ran a simulation. ProcessModel's simulation engine lets you view more than blink ing boxes: You see actual objects flowing through the system. I then viewed the simulation results in a variety of reports and charts that showed me potential bottlenecks.

ProcessModel should be a boon to those who want to evaluate new ways to reduce costs or improve efficiency. My only concern is that the high cost of ProcessModel ($695) may keep the program off some desks.

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Product Information

ProcessModel..........................$695

ProModel Corp.
Orem, UT
Phone:     (801) 223-4600
Internet:  
http://www.processmodel.com

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Put On a Happy Face

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