Lanner’s Virtual Brewery Demonstrates Broader Use Cases for Simulation Software

With bars, restaurants, and pubs across the world closed, simulation software provider Lanner Group’s virtual brewery provides an alternative to watching Netflix or playing Call of Duty during downtime. The scenario is that you have received UK£60,000 in investment funding and now need to maximize weekly profits.

Accessed via Lanner’s website and using Lanner’s WITNESS predictive digital twin software, users can experiment with how investments in equipment, ingredients, staff, etc. impact profits; the company claims there are 16 million combinations of improvements and upgrades. Results are published on a leaderboard, ranking the most profitable investments each week.

Lanner was formed by a management buyout from AT&T in 1996 and works with companies looking to deploy predictive simulation and asset modelling to support their decision-making processes. In January 2019, Lanner was acquired by Royal HaskoningDHV, a Dutch engineering and project management consultancy.

Manufacturers are slowly restarting their production lines, but operations won’t be the same. Successful manufacturers will need to have a flexible approach and be able to adapt to new circumstances. Simulation software will help decision makers assimilate data and evaluate options in a more dynamic fashion than relying on spreadsheets and Computer-Aided Design (CAD).

Digital twins are a digital representation of physical assets and processes and in effect provide customers with a virtual sandbox of their plant and operations. Lanner’s WITNESS predictive digital twin software helps its customers experiment and simulate scenarios so that they can understand the impact of those decisions going forward. The software can reassure plant managers of their operation’s resilience and mitigate the risk that changes have costly consequences.

Lanner’s software is being used in the food and beverage industry by Diageo, Britvic, and Mars plus automobile manufacturers Ford and Nissan. The deployment helped Brivtic visualize its processes, confirm the impact any changes would have on running costs, and perhaps more importantly helped operational staff gain the confidence of other stakeholders.

Lanner positions the technology as providing clients with a safe pair of hands to improve decision-making processes, identify opportunities to increase revenues and/or reduce costs, and optimize operations. For stakeholders who are not on the factory floor predictive simulation, especially its data visualization elements, helps to provide an understanding of complex dynamic processes.

ABI Research’s Industrial and Manufacturing Semiannual Update (PT-2373) provides our take on the effects of COVID-19 in the short and medium term. Regardless of the shape of the recovery, manufacturers will need to have resilience and flexibility on the production lines and investments in simulation software will help achieve these objectives. ABI Research forecasts these investments will reach US$2.6 billion in 2025.

The virtual brewery example demonstrates the value in being able to experiment/stress test aspects of operations without risking harm to the current operations. Additionally, scenario planning is critical to understanding impact on costs, resources, or staffing. The dynamic nature of predictive simulation means that options can be explored and visualized in seconds, providing all stakeholders with a greater understanding of the complexities and interdependencies of a process and management with a degree of confidence that the best course of action has been identified.

Finally, the gamification aspect makes digital twins more relatable to non-engineers and should stimulate thinking among players about how predictive simulation could be used in their own lines of work to avoid costly mistakes and improve operational effectiveness.