Accelerating process excellence using virtual discrete event process simulation |
Does Technology Funding add value?
Without government funding this project would not go ahead in any shape or form since it would not be able to overcome the significant combination of market barriers, technological barriers, prevailing practice barriers and investment barriers that project initiation requires.
- MARKET BARRIERS, in both industrial and service sectors, exist due to a lack of market familiarity with the use of V-DEPS based methods, ie there is no known ‘lean support’ application existing.
- TECHNOLOGICAL BARRIERS exist due to a lack of expertise in applying V-DEPS within the ‘lean support’ domain, the variety of V-DEPS software components that will need to be employed and the complexity involved in integrating such components.
- PREVAILING PRACTICE BARRIERS exist, ie current ‘lean training and support’ practices, although far limited in scope when compared with the use of V-DEPS, are more straight forward to understand and apply.
- Finally INVESTMENT BARRIERS exist, ie for the project to reach a critical mass a considerable fixed amount of cost & time resources are required to bring to fruition a prototype system.
However, the prototype system once developed will provide a means of overcoming the reluctance of the market to investment in this type of technology. A further difference the Technology Programme support makes is that the project requires a wide range of technological, scientific and practical lean expertise which can only be gained through a collaborative project of this nature. Such support enables the SCALE & QUALITY of the V-DEPS provision to be nationally generic and to include global best lean practices.