Patent ID: 8494975

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of estimating a ship date profile for a business, comprising: simulating a business operation by using a computer processor, said simulating comprising: modeling orders for a product including plural components by using a distribution function; representing availability quantities of the components by a multi-dimensional array having entries comprising a time-dependent component availability, the array comprising plural rows representing the components and plural columns representing plural times, and an entry in the array being located at an intersection of a row of the plural rows and a column of the plural columns and comprising a numerical value representing a quantity of a component represented by the row which will be available for shipment at a time represented by the column; simulating a plurality of dynamic events; and changing the availability quantities of the components based on the simulated plurality of dynamic events; estimating said ship date profile for said business using data derived from said simulated business operation; and estimating an accuracy of the estimated ship date profile, the accuracy of said estimated ship date profile being computed using a dynamic view of said component availability and a static view of said component availability, and the accuracy being based on a difference between the dynamic view and the static view of said component availability.