The time tab provides information about the elapsed time of the simulation, average cycle time by department, total transaction statistics and activity statistics for each task or symbol in the model. The cost, resource and queue tabs present equally revealing information. To simplify dissemination of process maps and reports via an intranet, Optima has a Save as HTML menu option, which lets you put reports and the process map into Hypertext Markup Language with all elements hyperlinked. Let's get started To get down to the nuts and bolts of your process, you activate Optima's Trace feature. Trace lets you observe the flow of transactions through the model from beginning to end.
Different colors represent the state of each transaction.
Green portrays a moving transaction, blue means a working transaction, magenta is a blocked transaction waiting for a condition to change and yellow is a transaction waiting for resources. The changing colors show at a glance how well the process is performing and where delays and bottlenecks exist. Optima excels at answering what-if questions. Make a few changes to your model, such as running certain tasks in parallel rather than serially, then start the simulation again and compare the changed results to the original. The frustrating thing about a tool such as Optima is that you can't produce useful results right out of the box.