Your new facility is up and running and you may or may not have had trouble getting to this point. You are eager to see your investment pay itself back manifold. Unluckily enough there are multiple factors that may threaten your ROI  :

- market conditions change causing your facility to no longer be operating optimally
- people rotation may cause your staff to not be getting the full potential out of your system 
- you may be blocked in your change initiatives because you cannot take the risk to disturb daily operations
 

This is where the virtual facility comes in. It takes away most all of the obstacles for change and does so with a low cost of ownership. It serves multiple purposes as testbed to :

- accurately quantify the impact of proposed changes
- provide short term lookahead capability
- allow you to evaluate different operating rules and/or software parameter settings
- provide a learning environment for new hirees