specification – Hindsight Consulting, Inc.

Using Project Objectives to Drive Simulation Quality Control

Nov 25, 2025Mike AllenBlogconceptual model, methodology, modeling, presentations, quality control, specification, statistics, unit testing, validation, verification, winter simulation conference

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be presenting Using Project Objectives to Drive Simulation Quality Control at this year’s Winter Simulation Conference.

My focus will be on creating useful, accurate, reliable, and credible simulation analyses founded upon your project’s objectives.

I’m honored to be a member of this conference’s Industrial Advisory Board, and my talk will be a part of their Keys to Simulation Success series, together with a group of highly respected and influential presenters. The details are in the flyer below, and I highly recommend that you catch their presentations.

I will also be hosting a panel on Simulation in Industry: Past, Present & Future, and will post further details shortly.

I hope you will join us in Seattle for what is shaping up to be another fantastic conference!

Flyer, detailing: Winter Simulation Conference December 7-10, 2025 Seattle, WA Register at WinterSim.org Industrial Advisory Board Presents Keys to Simulation Success: Using Project Objectives to Drive Simulation Quality Control—Mike Allen, President, Hindsight Consulting Simulation and Al—Andrei Borshchev, CEO, AnyLogic Planning for Simulation Project Success—Jennifer Cowden, Director of Consulting Services, BigBear Al Miscommunication in Simulation: Same Terms, Different Models—Amy Greer, Principal Simulation Engineer, MOSIMTEC & Jiaxi Zhu, Head of Analytics, Google How and When to Scope and Simplify Industry Simulations—Nate Ivey Senior Simulation Consultant, Rockwell Automation & Nancy Zupick, Manager of Arena Software, Rockwell Automation Verification and Validation in the Real World—Renee Thiesing, President, Promita LLC — Keys to Simulation Success Flyer

Simulation Quality Control

Mar 10, 2013Mike Allen2 CommentsBlogautomation, conceptual model, methodology, modeling, quality control, specification, unit testing, validation, verification

How do you know if the results of a simulation analysis are accurate and reliable?

This is an important and fundamental question. If a simulation produces invalid results, yet the client accepts and acts upon them, then they’re heading into a world of pain. Just as bad is the situation in which the results are valid, but are distrusted by the client and so are disregarded. In both cases, the outcomes can be catastrophic.…

A Checkbox Simulation Horror Story

Feb 15, 2013Mike AllenBlogassumptions, checkbox, post-mortem, simulation, specification, validation, verification

A checkbox simulation is a simulation study that is done purely to comply with a company policy that new facility designs must be simulated—but typically without any criteria specifying the quality of that simulation. What follows is a fictitious story—yet one that’s all-to-common in my experience—about the limitations of such simulation studies, and the accompanying race-to-the-bottom by consulting firms competing to perform them. I’m glad to point out that Hindsight is not one of them……