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Features

ChiAha™ is a modular application. Each package in the ChiAha™ family of digital twin simulation tools offers the same core set of high-end features. Packages differ based on added functionality. These are just a few of the capabilities packed into ChiAha™ products.

Modular Model Construction

  • Rate based modeling

    Discrete Rate modeling has been trusted by top Fortune listed companies for decades to simulate high-speed or large-volume bulk flow systems.

  • Parsimonious model construction

    A handful of simple concepts makes it easier to think about your production process model.

  • Pre-built Components

    Designed with the flexibility of a reusable model simulator with modular, higher-level constructs so that you can build a reputable production model faster.

  • Reliability Focused Design

    Integrated reliability interrupts drive high fidelity behavior.

  • Integrated Factory Physics

    Nodes with built-in blocking and starving behavior based on dynamics of line through time.

  • Intuitive Model Building

    No-Code and No-Drag & Drop model building. ChiAha™ leverages text based markdown to make the model building & simulation framework easier than ever.

What is ChiAha?  It’s a desktop simulation application that predicts the performance of high-speed/high-volume production systems with high accuracy, so that you can:

  • Identify the real bottleneck(s) in the production system. 
  • Get fast answers to strategic questions; e.g. top level: not ‘where to position the photo-eye’, but ‘how many stretchwrappers do we need to manage the flow?’
  • Get answers around operating strategy; e.g., consider the manufacturing flow of 2 roasters that feed 1 grinder that feeds 3 labellers that feed 2 case packers. Questions arise around load-sharing, line-balancing, surge and speed arrangements, and run rates (setpoints).
  • Prioritize equipment, reliability and procedural improvements, and help justify investments
  • Identify those unit operations or failure modes with “high leverage” ; i.e., ones having higher gains than their losses, as they improve other failure modes that are sensitive to starts and stops
  • Explore the tradeoff between adding surge capacity versus improving the availability of equipment (e.g., fixing a failure mode)
  • Stimulate staff vigilance and agency by visualizing impact of actions
  • Get a fuller picture – including variability – of performance in a world of random failures and uncertain operating conditions. 
  • Design optimum new production lines by determining an optimum overall throughput

Key Features:

  • Streamline the process of building an effective Digital Twin that focuses on the time-related dynamics that drive production efficiency.
  • Rate based modeling. Discrete Rate Simulation (DRS) Production Modeling for accurate and super-fast models of high-speed/high-volume, or any process in which “what flows” can be thought of in terms of rates. Understand all drivers of Availability, Performance, and Quality (A*P*Q).
  • Predict key performance metrics: throughput, availability, and Operational Efficiency & Effectiveness (OEE) of any production flow (As-Is or To-Be) process.
  • Prediction accuracy within 1% for the overall system OEE between a Simulation of 1 year and the actual data.
  • Explore the full variability of a decision’s impact through extreme time reduction. Run hundreds of 1-year and greater time horizons in minutes to project the full range of a decision’s impact. Blindingly fast model execution makes experimentation insightful, rewarding, and fun!
  • Intuitive Model Building. Use Click-Connect + Markdown to create and version-control production flow graphs
  • Composable Simulator Toolkit allows you to build models faster. Simulator design is parsimonious and opinionated, and uses practical data-driven constructs. The constructs’ design originates from the way data is collected on production lines. 
  • Nodes: Represent each unit operation through a Constraint (rate control), a Buffer (source of material), or a Conveyor (rate control with accumulation). Include detailed process equipment data: buffer volumes, conveyor speeds and lengths, buffer capacities of each conveyor
  • Nodes: Abide the factory physics and simulate dominant cause of failure during simulation; i.e., blocked, starved, or internally down
  • Node Units: Use whatever unit terminology makes sense at whatever stage in the process.
  • Node Unit Conversions: Establish an automatic equilibrium of flow for unit conversions, and optionally represent in-line additions or losses.
  • Interrupts: Formalize data-driven high fidelity behavior of multiple failure modes per unit operation
  • Interrupts: model random failures, operating policy, and/or uncertain operating conditions
  • Interrupts: have a defined “clock” criteria for predicting failure; i.e., Competing (e.g., random), Cumulative (e.g., wear-out), or Wall Clock (e.g., safety meeting).
  • Interrupts: Clean, map and fit from Line Event Data, using complementary Wishbone application.
  • Widely-used statistical distributions available (e.g., Lognormal, Normal, Weibull, Johnson Su) to fit the probability of an uptime or a downtime for each failure mode.
  • Import interrupts from external file.
  • Built-in OEE calculation, plots and reports on system and all nodes
  • Report exports
  • Scenario Exploration: Interrupts easily enabled or disabled to predict their loss or gain, respectively.
  • Scenario Exploration: Built-In Trade-off Experiments every plant manager would love to see
  • Automatically produced “model-literal” animation for every run executed. Playback and scrub controls to review all nodes’ states through time.
  • All the data lives inside your firewall. Nothing except license/version checks and updates occur over the internet.