ReliaSim + ReliaStats
Food World Summit 2026 · Grapevine, TX · Oct 5–7

Missing rate is easy to see.
Knowing why is not.

A longer hold-and-test, a tighter allergen changeover or an extra metal-detect reject loop is necessary, and each one takes cases off the end of the line, along with downtime, changeovers and staffing. In the monthly numbers they all look the same. We build a validated working copy of your line so the causes can be measured one at a time.

Book a meeting at the Summit or apply for a free line assessment

Validated within 1% of measured OEE · 300+ organizations since 1995 · 35 years in production simulation

Event
Food World Summit 2026
Dates
October 5–7
Venue
Gaylord Texan, Grapevine TX
Find us
Delegate Lounge
Bring
Your line’s stop/start log
Why we’re at this show

Safety and quality get decided
without a throughput number.

Food and beverage manufacturing runs on a standing argument. Quality and food safety own the protocol, and manufacturing owns the case count. The two collide over a longer hold, a wider sanitation window or a stricter reject rule. Whoever argues best wins, since nobody in the room can say what the protocol actually costs in cases per shift.

01 / The claim

“That protocol will kill the line.” It’s usually asserted and rarely measured. Sometimes it’s right and sometimes it’s wildly overstated, and there’s no way to tell which without running it.

Who says it: Manufacturing · Plant leadership
02 / The counter

“We can absorb it.” This usually rests on a spreadsheet of averages. A real line doesn’t run on averages, because machines wait on each other and one stop starves the next.

Who says it: FSQ · Quality · Compliance
03 / The answer

Run the change on a validated working copy of the line first. It has the same machines, speeds and breakdowns, and it runs a full year of production in seconds before you commit to anything.

What it takes: Data you already record
The technical reason this is hard

A food line isn’t a parts line.
Most simulation treats it like one.

Your process is a hybrid. Upstream is continuous (mixing, extruding, proofing, frying, a spiral freezer holding hours of product in transit). Downstream is discrete (fill, seal, case-pack, palletize). Conventional discrete-event simulation was built for the discrete half and approximates the continuous half badly. That continuous half is where food lines hide their losses.

Conventional discrete-event simulation
Models every unit as a discrete entity
Bulk and continuous stages approximated
Work-in-process inside a freezer or proofer is invisible
Days to set up, hours per scenario
Discrete rate simulation
Continuous flow and discrete packaging in one model
Bulk stages modeled as flow, not approximated
Pipeline fill and drain represented explicitly
Minutes to set up, seconds per scenario

Andrew Siprelle developed bulk-flow discrete rate simulation in 1995 for this kind of process, so a food line is our home ground rather than an awkward fit.

At the stand

Four things you can do
in fifteen minutes.

There are no slides. Each of these is a working demo you can run yourself, and you can keep the last one.

2 minutes
New to simulation? Start here.
A short primer in plain English on what a simulation of a production line is, and why averages can’t answer the questions you’re asking. It doesn’t assume any modeling background. Most people in this room don’t have one and don’t need one.
5 minutes
Watch a line get built from a stop/start log.
Your line already records when each machine stopped and started. That’s the raw material, so there’s nothing new to install and no IT project. We build a model in front of you and validate it against measured OEE.
5 minutes
See why gain never equals loss.
Your loss tree ranks failure modes by downtime. Eliminate the top one and you rarely recover what it said you would. Sometimes you get far less and sometimes far more. We eliminate each failure mode in turn, re-simulate the whole system, and measure the throughput actually recovered, and the ranking changes.
3 minutes
Price a quality or food-safety change.
Extend a hold, tighten a reject rule, widen the sanitation window or add a changeover step for allergen control. Watch what each one does to cases per shift on a validated model, and take the answer back to the argument you’re currently losing.
Reserve a slot

Slots run 20 minutes and fill first. Walk-ups are welcome in the Delegate Lounge.

While you’re in Dallas

A half-day session, either end of the show

There’s no extra trip. We’re running a hands-on half day at each end of the Summit, on Monday 5 October, morning, before the floor opens, and Wednesday 7 October, afternoon, as it winds down. Take whichever fits your travel.

It’s a small group. Bring your own line’s event data if you have it and leave with a working model of it rather than a brochure. It’s a short version of the two-day workshop we teach at UTK’s Reliability & Maintainability Center, and no prior simulation experience is needed.

Places are limited by the room. Tell us which half day suits you and we’ll hold one.

Hold me a place →
Two weeks after the Summit

Or take the full two days at UT Knoxville

If the half day is too short, the complete course runs 20–21 October at UTK’s Reliability & Maintainability Center, two weeks after the Summit closes. It’s fourteen hours of hands-on work where you build a model of a line yourself.

It counts toward the RMC’s Reliability & Maintainability Implementation Certification (RMIC®).

$1,200 · Knoxville, TN · no prior simulation experience required.

Course details →

Get everything from the booth

You’ll get the sandbox, the case study, the method and the podcast, plus occasional notes on production simulation. There’s no sales sequence, and you can leave any time.