Dallas, Texas (8/21/15) Lone Star is leading the Modeling Best Practices Benchmarking Project (MBP2). This effort is surveying a broad range of modeling practices and will share insights among professionals who might not otherwise have the opportunity to gain insight from outside their own communities. Several leading groups have either already participated, or have agreed to participate. These include academic, corporate, and government organizations.

Modeling, simulation and analysis (MS&A) supports a wide range of economic, academic and governmental efforts. Different practitioner communities have agreed on MS&A practices within their own disciplines. But there is little interaction among communities. As a result, best practices in one MS&A community may not be familiar to others.

A benchmarking template was developed, consulting a wide range of modeling disciplines. Practitioners consulted had experience in the following fields: Big Data Analytics and Modeling, Seismic Data Processing and Analysis, Operations Research, Management Science, Physical Modeling for Scientific Research, Physical Modeling for Design Engineering and Performance Prediction (e.g., Aerospace Flight Simulation, Energetics ), Communication Network Simulation, Health Care, Financial Services, Signal Processing Modeling, Production Process Simulation, Human Performance and Behavioral Modeling, Game Theory Based Simulation of Competitions, Microeconomic Simulation, Macroeconomic Simulation, Training Simulators, Logistics and Supply Chain Simulation, Conflict & Combat Simulation, Policy and Governance Analysis and Modeling, and other areas.

From these practitioners, and from a review of literature on general MS&A practices, a set of benchmarking topics were defined. These topics are being explored across MS&A communities of practice in several disciplines.

Steve Roemerman, Lone Star CEO said, “Since Lone Star’s MS&A offerings cut across a wide range of disciplines, it made sense for us to lead the MBP2 project. Although we are just getting started we already see some surprising results. It is clear best practices are not shared widely across the modeling and simulation community. To date we’ve seen some organizations who are probably performing at “best in class” in some areas, but don’t know they are at that level. Another surprise have been how eager impressive organizations are to be part of MBP2.

For those who are interested and would like to register to participate in this project, please click on this link https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MBP2_Interest_Registration

MBP2 will continue through the spring of 2016. The first public discussion is planned for the Probability Management conference in January 26-27, 2016. Information about the conference is available at http://probabilitymanagement.org/ MBP2 results will be published after benchmarking is completed in 2016.