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Build your own pub!
Kevis Pachos & David [email protected]@decisionlab.co.uk
Young OR 18, Exeter University10th April 2013
This Objective
• Win 2 bottles of cheap fizz!
• Get an overview of simulation• Take a quick look at AnyLogic as a simulation tool• Get some understanding regarding the different
approaches to simulation– Discrete event for the business processes– (System Dynamics)– Agent-Based for the business strategy
• See how a business game can be used to bring learninginto an organisation
About Decision Lab
• Operational Research (OR) consultancy
• Business set-up
– 5 permanent OR modellers
– Plus 3 to 5 technical associates
– Geographically spread
– London office
What are we going to do?
• Build a process model of a pub in AL– Test and learn to understand how our operations perform
• Bring the pub models (the ones you’ve developed) into a broader game – to understand how the drinking strategy of a town might play out
• Imagine that..– The town planners want to know how many pubs the town can
support– The council want to know if you can create a happy society– The brewery want to know if it can make money
• (and if you’ll be a good strategic decision maker)
What you’ll be doing
• ‘Right size’ the operations of the pub for a given number of customers
• Using AnyLogic to build a simulation of the pub process– Using the fundamental concept of discrete event simulation
• To do this, you’ll need to install & activate the AnyLogicsoftware– Then follow the instructions put together by Dan– Given the time constraints, Dan has given you a starting point
What you’ll be doing…cont’d (supporting strategic DM)
• Decisions
– The town planners want to know how many pubs the town can support
– The council want to know if you can create a happy society
– The brewery want to know if the system can make money
• To achieve this we will extend using models using some agent based thinking
• Playing the game– In teams, Pub’s will compete against each other
• You will set the strategy for– Pricing
– Capacity
» # of bar tenders (affect how quickly people get served)
» # of seats & # of standing positions (adds to the cost of running the business, but increases the comfort level of the customer)
» # of spaces at the bar (affect’s the customer’s perception of ‘busyness’
• Strategy can be updated weekly
Why would you ever want to do Agent Based Modelling?
• Most problems may now be described by the term ‘complex adaptive systems’ which interact and evolve– Our traditional, top Down (Reductionist) approaches are not sufficient to deal with these issues– ABMS (using a constructivist philosophy) allows us to embrace the complexity
• Really good for looking at business strategy problems– Generally include more about user perception of localised decision making
• Creates a closer 1 to 1 relationship between the real problem and abstracted model
• To the customer, feels like to more natural way to represent the problem– Better client engagement
• Allows the capturing of more complex behaviours which influence system performance
• Allows the adoption of a rule based approach at a micro level– Reduces reliance on probabilistic methods– i.e. BDI
• But first, let’s build the pub
– Gain experience of using AnyLogic
– Introduction to process simulation (for those that haven’t used it previously)
Let’s play the game – “test & learn”
The rules
• The customer agent will decide who to buy from– Where shall I go decision?
• Is it too costly?
• Is it too busy?
– Customer’s will remembers previous performance & can select pubs as a favourite
– Customer will decide to have another drink, if they are satisfied tonight• If they aren’t then they will go to a competitor, unless everyone is
too busy, then they go home
• There’s about 800 customers per night to fight for…
What we know about running a pub..
• Fixed costs are a function of– Seating capacity– Standing capacity– Bar spaces
• Variable costs– Staffing (£75 per day)
• Cost of sales– All drinks cost you £1 (you are free to set the resell price)
• Each week there’s a management meeting with the brewery – This is when you can change the configuration of the pub
What we know about the town..
• The town has a population of 10k, and between 7 and 10% drink regularly at the weekends
• During mid-week, only about 5% go out
• People tended to drink more on the weekends
What we know from the customer focus groups..
• (remember ABMS is a bottom up modelling approach)– (An agent based models can only reflect the behaviours and interactions that are incorporated into
the design• Its interesting to do because of the interactions of the population over time, and the ‘live’ decision making
• This results in the system complexity and the emergence often talked about)
• About 50% of customer’s said that they sometimes choose a pub because of its environment and comfy seats even though the prices might be higher
– But if the price is too high, then they’d rather drink down the road
• Nobody liked having to queue at the bar, all respondents said that they’d probably look to go elsewhere if the pub was too busy
• Customers drink faster when standing up, but prefer to sit down when choosing where to go
• Customer’s have their favourite pubs which they tend to go to first
Thank you for playing
For more information –• www.decisionlab.co.uk• www.anylogic.com• http://www.theorsociety.com/Pages/Training/Courses/3238.aspx
