How the butterfly effect costs you time and money

Published Wednesday June 4, 2025

High volume processes like bottle filling and box conveying are examples of chaotic systems subject to the butterfly effect. They can run fine for hours or days, then suddenly jam or stop altogether. Someone runs out and “fixes” it, but in most cases, the root cause is never understood. 

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A slight misalignment, a minor tolerance shift, or a subtle change in material behavior can cause performance issues that aren’t caught until it’s too late. These low-frequency, high-impact issues are often the result of the butterfly effect in process operation: small changes that ripple through a system and trigger impactful, and usually adverse, unexpected outcomes.

APS is 1000X faster than traditional methods

Conventional methods take many hours or even days to produce a result for one set of conditions, but thousands of studies are required to represent the variability of real life and capture the butterfly effect in action. Kinetic Vision addresses this challenge with ourAccelerated Physics Simulation (APS) technology, a cutting-edge capability that enables thousands of possible scenarios to be studied in minutes.  

Drive cost savings with OOE improvements

Accounting for manufacturing and setup variability, environmental conditions, and multi-physics interactions, APS helps engineering teams uncover rare but important failure modes and optimize performance while minimizing downtime. We work with your team to increase your system’s Overall Operational Effectiveness (OOE), saving you time and money.  

The result is faster development cycles, reduced risk, and greater confidence when installing new processes or troubleshooting existing ones. Explore how APS is helping our clients solve complex production challenges by contacting us. 

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