Simulation assisted product development program planning

Numerous industries, including those in the automotive and pharmaceutical industries, use a program approach to product development. Companies must plan the start times of programs in order to meet future revenue requirements. At the same time, companies perform resource planning to set targets for human and capital requirements. Traditional spreadsheet analyses lack the ability to incorporate variability in program arrival patterns, program phase lengths, program resource needs and program success. The implication of this static analysis is an often inaccurate view of programs, resources, revenues and costs in the future. This paper describes an implementation of program planning utilizing discrete-event simulation. The benefits of this approach are described, including (1) a flexible input mechanism for capturing the planner´s assumptions, (2) approaches to introducing variability into the analysis, and (3) organization of the results in an easy-to-use format