Eddie Elizondo | Last updated February 2025 | No Hype Analytics blog homepage
Supply chains are in the spotlight again. Tariffs risk disrupting manufacturing networks.
Supply chain leaders are asking:
- How exposed are we?
- How can we rework product routings to reduce tariffs?
- Do we have enough capacity in our manufacturing and logistics networks to minimize our tariff exposure?
- What is our gameplan for different tariff scenarios?
- Where are potential supply pressure points where we should start securing supply?
These are complex planning questions that demand rapid scenario analysis, but evaluating fundamental changes with countless variables and options is tough. Variability in demand, production, materials, and logistics, makes traditional planning even harder.
Simulation is a perfect tool for this task. It is useful when uncertainty and variance have a significant impact on decisions, or there are many chained events resulting from a decision. Modeling system dynamics helps power scenario-based analytics to improve decisionmaking.
Simulations (i.e., digital twins in some marketing material) however are underutilized in practice. They are difficult to get right: they need deep customization to replicate unique supply chain or system dyanmics, and they need to be embedded in a value-generating process (not just a cool toy). When at their best, simulations are bespoke tools that run alongside planning and other decision-making at a company. We have a demo for a bespoke planning simulation: click here. Simulations are also great tools to evaluate optimization and other data science models in a sandbox, since they replicate system behavior.
A bespoke simulation can be developed in under 2 weeks, with the right expertise and a targeted approach. Reach out to me if this can help you.
Do you have questions, thoughts, feedback, comments? Please get in touch - I would love to hear from you: eddie@betteroptima.com