People Flow in an Office

Challenge

The challenge was to quickly create a proof of concept simulation of people working and interacting in an office. The objective was to understand which areas of the office yield more traffic, and which areas are less visited. The activities to be captured included:

• Working in desks, library, hangout area, gathering space, and balcony
• Using the restrooms
• Attending meetings
• Eating lunch
• Using the coffee area and the kitchen

Solution

To build this model, the pedestrian library of AnyLogic was used in combination with the process modeling library. This model was created in less than one day, demonstrating that a simple proof of concept can be built extremely fast with clearly communicated assumptions. Since this office didn't exist and no data was available, conservative assumptions were generated independently. The client also needed a quick solution, so simplifying the model to avoid wasting time looking for nonexistent data was the right decision.

Outcome

The client needed this proof of concept as part of a proposal to design an office layout. The output was a video where the office population could be easily seen for distribution to different stakeholders that may have difficulties using AnyLogic or executing standalone applications. The video was presented as part of the full proposal. Even though the simulation was not the protagonist this time, it was used as an additional data point to support the office layout design.

Project Features

• Industry: Office
• Model: Discrete Events, Pedestrians
• Duration: 1 day