There is an excellent example of using a Monte Carlo simulation (or method) to calculate the risk of leasing a new machine in a manufacturing process. You can find the example on pages 82 through to 86.
Given my hatred of spreadsheets and having recently started playing with R, I thought I would have a go at replicating the simulation using R.
This is what I wrote. Please note I'm still an R n00b so some things can be done better no doubt.
######################### Variables ####################### # Firstly set this to TRUE if we want to save our plot as a # PNG and if so, what file and dimensions bDoPNG <- FALSE sFile <- "htma.png" iWidth <- 1024 iHeight <- 768 # The following values represent our 90% confidence interval # (CI) ranges for the various inputs to our simulation. # We are 90% confident that the maintenance savins per unit # is between $10 and $20 vMaintenanceSavingsPerUnit <- c(10,20) # We are 90% confident that the labour savings per unit # is between $-2 and $8 vLabourSavingsPerUnit <- c(-2,8) # We are 90% confident that the raw material savings per unit # is between $3 and $9 vRawMaterialsSavingsPerUnit <- c(3,9) # We are 90% confident that the production level per year # will be between 15K and 35K units vProductionLevelPerYear <- c(15000,35000) # The annual lease is $400K so we need to save this amount # just to break even for the investment iAnnualLease <- 400000 # This is a quick cheat which basically means there are # 3.29 standard deviations in a 90% confidence interval iStdDevCheat <- 3.29 # This is the number of simulations we are going to run iNumberOfSims <- 100000 ##################### Generate the basic data ################### # A new data frame initiated to have iNumberOfSims rows in it dData <- data.frame(seq(1,iNumberOfSims)) # We use the rnorm function to generate a distribution across # all the simulations for the maintenance savings. The mean is # literally just the mean of the range (e.g. (20-10)/2) and we # also give it the standard deviation of (20-10)/3.29. dData$MainSavings <- rnorm(iNumberOfSims, mean(vMaintenanceSavingsPerUnit), diff(vMaintenanceSavingsPerUnit,1,1)/iStdDevCheat) # Same again for the labour savings dData$LabourSavings <- rnorm(iNumberOfSims, mean(vLabourSavingsPerUnit), diff(vLabourSavingsPerUnit,1,1)/iStdDevCheat) # And the raw material savings dData$RawMaterialsSavings <- rnorm(iNumberOfSims, mean(vRawMaterialsSavingsPerUnit), diff(vRawMaterialsSavingsPerUnit,1,1)/iStdDevCheat) # And finally the production levels dData$ProdLevel <- rnorm(iNumberOfSims, mean(vProductionLevelPerYear), diff(vProductionLevelPerYear,1,1)/iStdDevCheat) # We can now create our total savings column based on the # inputs given. Because R is a vector language, the below # operation is applied to each row automatically. dData$TotalSavings <- (dData$MainSavings + dData$LabourSavings + dData$RawMaterialsSavings) * dData$ProdLevel # Later on it will look better on the graphs if we deal # with numbers in thousands so create a couple of shortcut variables dData$TotalSavingsThousands <- dData$TotalSavings/1000 iAnnualLeaseThousands <- iAnnualLease/1000 # We now let R generate a histogram of our savings but without # actually plotting the results. We will end up with a series of # buckets (aka breaks) which will go on the X axis and the number # of simulations that fell within each bucket (on the Y axis) hHist <- hist(dData$TotalSavingsThousands,plot=FALSE) # We create a new data frame for the breaks and counts # excluding the last break dHistData <- data.frame( breaks=hHist$breaks[1:length(hHist$breaks)-1], count=hHist$counts) # We can calculate the chance of the project making a loss as # the sum of counts where the breaks were less than # the annual lease (ie. $400K). fPercentChanceOfLoss <- 100*sum(subset(dHistData, breaks<iAnnualLeaseThousands, select=count))/sum(dHistData$count) # Calculate the median of the savings. That is 50% of # the simulations had savings less than the median # and 50% had savings of more than the median. fMedian <- median(dData$TotalSavingsThousands) # We put that chance of loss in a sub title sSubTitle <- sprintf("%02.2f%% chance of loss at $400K expense, median savings at $%02.0fK", fPercentChanceOfLoss, fMedian) # Check whether we want to save our PNG bDoPNG && is.null(png(sFile, width=iWidth, height=iHeight)) # Now draw the actual histogram, setting some labels but without # drawing the axis hist(dData$TotalSavingsThousands,col="lightblue", main="Histogram of Savings", xlab="Savings per Year ($000s in 100,000 increments)", ylab="Senarios in Increment", axes=F) # Add the sub title mtext(sSubTitle) # Draw the Y axis using default parameters axis(2) # Now draw the X axis explicitly setting values of the ticks/breaks axis(1, at=hHist$breaks) # That's it, turn off output if saving PNG bDoPNG && is.null(dev.off())And this is the pretty graph it produced. It should look similar to the one on page 86.

So yeah, go buy the book. Read it. Then have fun with R :)
Great Post ,
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Neat example, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteMight want to check your colour scheme. I can't even read the text
ReplyDeleteGreat help, two "errors" to note.
ReplyDeleteFirstly and probably encoding on the webpage not real error:
breaks<iAnnualLeaseThousands,
should be:
breaks<iAnnualLeaseThousands,
The other a d should replace an h.
axis(1, at=dHist$breaks)
should be:
axis(1, at=hHist$breaks)
Thanks for the help this provided.
Cool, thanks for the bugs :) Updated, but not tested.
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