When You Want Something Done Right – Outsource It

I was asked to create a discrete event simulation program for a planned factory expansion many years ago at Armstrong World Industries. What is that, you may ask? Basically, it’s a computer model of a process as it operates. It tries to mirror the behavior of the process, allowing the user to try various “what if” scenarios, such as adding capacity, downtime, resources, or speed. Having not built any simulations since my college days, I started doing research on options and whether or not I should try to build it myself or hire an outside vendor.

No one at Armstrong had experience with simulation. The last person who did left the company three years before. The software he used was no longer available, and the owner of that company had died. I had to start from scratch.

After a few weeks of research, I found a simulation program called Simul8. It seemed intuitive and relatively inexpensive, so I bought a copy and started playing around with it. It didn’t take long to figure out I was in over my head! Instead of giving up, I found a company in Canada that was a licensed distributor and trainer for the software.

I signed up for a training course and flew up to their headquarters in Toronto. Because I had purchased additional coaching, I was able to get direct assistance on the project I was working on. During the week, I made significant progress on my simulation program and felt confident I would be able to complete the work in a reasonable amount of time.

When I got back to my office at Armstrong, I stayed focused on the simulation and from time to time, I would get stuck. The trainers were available to coach me through my issues for a fee, and eventually I finished the program.

We were able to simulate the plant expansion and try many experiments and “what ifs” related to various plant scenarios. Everything worked, except the program was slow. I knew that it was due to my lack of experience. I wasn’t using the power of the program and taking advantage of the shortcuts an experienced programmer would know.

That’s when I realized I could play a more valuable role for future simulation projects. Now that I knew the ins and outs of the program and what it was capable of, I could help other project managers assess whether or not simulation would help them deliver their projects in an efficient way. Then, if we agreed that it would, I would engage the experienced simulation programmers from Toronto and let them write the code in a much more efficient and logical manner.

It cost more money directly, but because their programs ran many times faster, we saved a lot more money in the long run. And, through the years, our vendor learned so much about our process, it took less time to complete the work for us.

The lesson I learned from all of this is that you can’t be an expert in everything, but if you can find the person who is, you can maximize your return by using their services.