Benefits

Here is a short list of benefits for companies working with STAN:

1. By creating a graphical model (flows and processes) of what's happening in a company, you get to know your system much better. Sometimes companies are not aware of internal flows, stocks and losses.
   Additionally, a flow graph says more than 1000 tables. It is easy to communicate the functionality of the company to new colleagues by showing them a flow graph.
2. The most important constraint in STAN is mass conservation (i.e. material cannot appear or disappear, what is going into a process must come out again). Thus, it is easy to find contradictions when applying data from internal material accounting to your model.
3. Once built, it is easy to update the model with data from different time periods by using an easy to use interface to MS Excel.
4. You can easily calculate unknown or not measureable quantities (e.g. internal flows, changes in stocks).
5. If you decide to work with data uncertainties (highly recommended!), you can also compute uncertainty ranges for unknown but computable quantities.
6. If you assign data uncertainties to your input data, you can use the data reconciliation functionality of STAN to find the most plausible values and get information if gross errors are detected.
7. You can easily trace the flows of elements and compounds of interest (e.g. because of environmental reasons) within your system by using substance layers.