SAP Simulation

What is Simulation?

Simulation modeling is the capability to leverage analytics and digital tools to help answer “what-if” questions in the business context. These tools help you evaluate the impact of business decisions on your business processes and may help you select the most optimal decision. An example may be manufacturing scheduling. A simulation modeling tool can help you evaluate the impact of various scheduling approaches on manufacturing cycle time.

What is Simulation?

Simulation tools often help evaluate recommendations from other analytics approaches like optimization, without implementing those recommendations in the real-world. The three most widely used process simulation modeling types are:

System dynamics
Discrete event modeling
Agent-based modeling

Simulation Technologies Available in the SAP World

Process simulation modeling tools have been leveraged extensively in SAP technology ecosystem. An example is SIMUL8, which is a flow simulation program that can help you visualize your process flows, understand the bottlenecks, and evaluate the impact of change in parameters on the process. As far as non-SAP process simulation modeling solutions are concerned, all leading simulation software tools like AnyLogic and Simio integrate well with SAP environments.

Key Considerations for SAPinsiders

Understand the methods and process alignment. The choice of method that should be used is based on the system being modeled and the purpose of the model. It is therefore critical to understand which specific simulation method will be a good fit. This is important from the perspective of tools being leveraged since some tools have more coverage and use cases in certain methods.

Define the level of abstraction of the process model. This is where you define how detailed your model needs to be. Remember that this depends on the modeling objective. As an example, if you are trying to gain an understanding of the cycle time of a product flow across the supply chain, you do not need to model individual processes within a manufacturing location. But if your simulation model is going to focus on the impact of changeover time on a manufacturing line, you may have to model the entire line flow in detail.

Think about integration with tools like business process intelligence (BPI). Note that the majority of BPI tools already do a good job of capturing process flow and building a model from that flow. Not all of them, however, offer simulation capabilities and those that do may not have the features a standalone pure simulation tool or module may offer. By strategically integrating a simulation tool with a BPI tool, you can create a solution that takes your process management capabilities even further.

- SAP Machine Learning
Why You Can’t Remove Humans from AI Training Loops

Reading time: 5 mins

Although generating high-quality, realistic synthetic data for machine learning training applications has become easier, it will never replace human-annotated training data collected in the real world. Find out why humans are still needed. Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready a member? Log in here
- SAP Machine Learning
Tools for Making Machine Learning Easier and Smoother

Reading time: 10 mins

Understand the concept of blockchain and explore the services released by SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain service that allow users to develop blockchain scenarios. Learn how to connect a manufacturing execution system (MES) to SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC). Understand common use cases and best practices during the implementation. Learn integration options, avoid common pitfalls,…
- SAP Data Center
Get Data From Any Table in Another SAP System

Reading time: 18 mins

Say you want to get the contents of a table from one of your SAP systems (called the source system) into a current system (called the client system). Most of the time if you want to access the table content of a source system, you need to: Check to see if the content is in...…
- SAP S/4HANA Finance
SAP S/4HANA Finance: What’s in a Name?

Reading time: 13 mins

Finance is currently at the forefront of technology innovations within SAP. By being the first line of business to re-architect the core finance and controlling capabilities to leverage the capabilities of SAP S/4HANA, finance professionals can increase their organizations’ efficiency through automation, thereby freeing up their bandwidth to leverage dynamic planning and modeling to provide...…
- SAP BusinessObjects
Quick Tip: An Introduction to SAP BusinessObjects Roambi Analytics

Reading time: 9 mins

Learn about the key features of SAP BusinessObjects Roambi to help you assess whether to incorporate it into your enterprise’s BI strategy. Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready a member? Log in here
- SAP ABAP
Migrating Custom ABAP Code to SAP S/4HANA

Reading time: 18 mins

Ever since SAP first introduced SAP S/4HANA back in early 2015, there’s been a lot of confusion in the SAP community about what SAP S/4HANA really is and how it will affect the SAP development landscape going forward. With so much misinformation out there, these mysteries can be hard to unravel — especially for customers…
- SAP EWM
Bob’s Discount Furniture Grows from 40 to 120+ Stores with Improved Warehouse Management

Reading time: 3 mins

Warehouse managers leverage SAP Extended Warehouse Management to integrate with SAP ECC and scale with the business by Pierce Owen, VP of Research and Publishing, SAPinsider Most (59%) leading SAP supply chain customers — companies achieving significantly better supply chain business results than the competition — currently use a warehouse management system (WMS) to manage...…
5 Steps of S&OP to Achieve an Integrated Business Plan

Reading time: 14 mins

Sales and operations planning (S&OP) is a set of decision-making processes that regulate and coordinate overall capacity, inventory levels, and lead times across engineering, projects, manufacturing, finance, supply chain, and operations based on forecast information about the market. S&OP focuses on changes from the previous plan and links that with the strategic goals of cost…
- SAP Financial Consolidation
- Premium
Working with the Data Monitor in SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting

Reading time: 12 mins

SAP S/4HANA Finance for group reporting was designed to help businesses better consolidate data to achieve accurate reporting. Its capabilities have been credited with reducing time to close, supporting continuous accounting, and enhancing auditability and reliance on reported results. In his article, Arellius Enterprises’ Dr. Marco Sisfontes-Monge, who has supported customers implementing SAP for more…
- SAP Analytics Cloud
- Premium
A General Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud

Reading time: 7 mins

Managing multiple reports, charts, tables, and models in a single environment and with real-time data from multiple sources can be challenging. Over the years SAP has designed multiple tools to support these tasks and help business users identify trends and behaviors. Most recently, SAP Analytics Cloud was created to provide a unified and secure public…