Lanner Group Ltd

Lanner Group Ltd is a software company specialising in simulation software such as discrete event simulation and predictive simulation, headquartered in Birmingham, UK. The business develops, markets and supports business process simulation and optimisation systems.[2][3] The company has subsidiaries in the US, China, France and Germany and a distributor network selling the company's products in 20 different countries.[4] Lanner Group was formed following a Management Buyout of AT&T Istel, a spin-off from the operational research department of British Leyland where, in 1978, the world's first visual interactive simulation tool was developed.[5] Lanner Group services automotive, aviation, criminal justice, defence and aerospace, financial services and contact centres, food and beverage, health, logistics and supply chain, manufacturing, nuclear, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, and consumer health industries.[6]

Lanner Group Ltd
TypePrivate Limited company
Founded1996 (following a management buyout from AT&T Istel)
HeadquartersBirmingham, United Kingdom
Key people
[1]
Websitewww.lanner.com

Company history

Lanner Group formed in 1996 after completing a Management Buyout from AT&T Istel;[2] the company was initially named SEE WHY SOLUTIONS and was incorporated in 1995.[6] Lanner Group's previous owner, AT&T Istel, formerly known as ISTEL, was initially called BL Systems, and was a spin out formed in 1979 following a Merger of all the computer departments under the then British Leyland umbrella. BL System's SEE WHY tool, programmed in Fortran 77[7] and launched in 1980,[2] was the world's first commercially available visual interactive simulation package and the precursor to Lanner Group's current core software product WITNESS.[8][9] WITNESS was the first of the industrial strength 4GL simulators.[10] The WITNESS system was launched on IBM PC in 1986[2] and has been revised frequently since.[2][11][12] The latest version of Lanner's Witness was released in summer 2017.[13][14]

The applications of the FORTRAN 77 / WITNESS interface have been subject to further academic Research and Development.[15][16] Since 1985 the company has supported its simulation software academic program. Over 100 universities worldwide have been involved since the program began.[17]

Lanner Group continued to develop the WITNESS platform further in parallel to developing its mainstay product of the same name, and since 2002 has introduced new systems providing niche simulation packages for police and healthcare organisations called PRISM and PX-Sim respectively.[2][3] In 2006 the company unveiled a Java based simulation engine called L-SIM which is embedded in Business Process Management (BPM) solutions software.[18] In May the same year, a technology partnership with BPM solution provider IDS Scheer was announced.[19] The L-SIM product is now the simulation engine of IDS Scheer's ARIS Business Simulator.[20] The company's WITNESS platform technology is therefore embedded into current Oracle, SAP, and IBM BPA products.[21]

From 1996 to 2010 the company's main investor was private equity company 3i. On 18 March 2010 Lanner Group announced that it had secured a £3 million new investment deal with NVM Private Equity replacing 3i.[22] 3i continues to retain an interest in Lanner Group as a small minority investor.[4]

References
  1. Companies House Register WebCheck
  2. Lanner Group Company History Page
  3. "West Midlands ICT Case studies 2009". Archived from the original on 25 July 2010. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
  4. "3i Investment portfolio". Archived from the original on 18 August 2009. Retrieved 9 September 2010.
  5. Hollocks, BW (2006). "Forty years of discrete-event simulation-a personal reflection". Journal of the Operational Research Society. 7 (12): 1383–1399. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602128. S2CID 45610706.
  6. "Lanner Group Limited" [company overview]. Bloomberg Businessweek. Archived from the original on 6 October 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  7. Allen MJ (29 January 2008). "Programming Language Benchmarks". Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  8. Gilman AR, Billingham C (1989). "A tutorial on SEE WHY and WITNESS". Proceedings of the 21st conference on Winter simulation - WSC '89. New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 192–200. doi:10.1145/76738.76761. ISBN 0911801588. S2CID 15064840.
  9. Diamond R, Harrell CR, Henriksen JO, Nordgren WB, Pegden CD, Rohrer MW, Waller AP, Law AM (2002). "The current and future status of simulation software (Panel)". Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference. Vol. 2. Winter Simulation Conference. pp. 1633–1640. doi:10.1109/WSC.2002.1166445. ISBN 0-7803-7614-5. S2CID 889407.
  10. Enstone LR, Clark MF (April 2006). "BPMN and simulation" (PDF). Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  11. Lanting Lu (May 2009). "Modelling breakdown durations in simulation models of engine assembly lines, PhD thesis" (PDF). School of Mathematics, University of Southampton. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  12. Staff Reporter (26 August 2010). "Lanner's Witness simulation software gets new licence manager". Works Management News. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  13. "WITNESS Simulation Modeling Software | Lanner".
  14. Brothersoft News (12 November 2010). "Latest Edition of WITNESS Software Released: Allows Any Business to Optimize Process Performance with Simulation Software – Fast". brothersoft.com. Retrieved 25 January 2011.
  15. Rotab Khana MR, Harlock SC, Leaf GA (1 December 1999). "Computer simulation of production systems for woven fabric manufacture". Computers & Industrial Engineering. 37 (4): 745–756. doi:10.1016/s0360-8352(00)00009-7.
  16. Goyal SK, Mehta K, Kodali R, Deshmukh SG (1995). "Simulation for analysis of scheduling rules for a flexible manufacturing system". Integrated Manufacturing Systems. 6 (5): 21–26. doi:10.1108/09576069510093442.
  17. "Simulation modeling software company Lanner Group partner Ingram school of engineering". Materials Handling World Magazine. 5 July 2010. Archived from the original on 19 July 2011. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  18. Waller AP, Clark MF, Enstone LR (2006). "L-SIM : Simulating BPMN Diagrams with a Purpose Built Engine". Proceedings of the 2006 Winter Simulation Conference. Winter Simulation Conference. pp. 591–597. doi:10.1109/WSC.2006.323134. ISBN 1-4244-0500-9. S2CID 28426932.
  19. "IDS Scheer and Lanner announce partnership for Java based business process simulation". IDS-Sheer.com. Archived from the original on 26 January 2013. Retrieved 21 November 2010.
  20. Bob Violino. "BPM: 3 Vendors To Watch". CIO Zone. Archived from the original on 19 January 2013. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  21. "Lanner Group company website 'Business Partners' page". Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  22. Brian Tinham (22 March 2010). "Lanner Group secures new funding with NVM to execute growth plans". Works Management news. Retrieved 23 October 2010.

Further reading
  • Greasley, A (2004). Simulation modelling for business. Ashgate Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-7546-3214-8.
  • Hunt, V Daniel (1996). Process Mapping: How to Reengineer Your Business Processes. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-13281-0.
  • Press WH, Flannery BP, Teukolsky S, Vetterling WT (1992). Numerical Recipes in Fortran 77: The Art of Scientific Computing. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43064-X.
  • Robinson, S (2004). Simulation: The Practice of Model Development and Use. Wiley. ISBN 0-470-84772-7.
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