Overview:
Computer simulation is an extremely valuable tool being used more and more in industry and government to assist in the design, creation and evaluation of complex systems. This course will equip you to assist in the design of large-scale systems, evaluate alternative courses of action and improve the efficiency of your manufacturing or service center. The instructor will take you step by step through the key ideas of computer simulation. Along the way, you will see examples of the mathematical and statistical concepts you will need to perform a valid simulation study. A practical, hands-on approach will be taken and each concept will be supplemented with case studies using a popular, easy-to-use simulation package featuring graphical animation capabilities.
What You Will Learn:
- Assist in the design of a large-scale system
- Evaluate different courses of action
- Improve the efficiency of a manufacturing facility
- Lead a simulation project
Course Content
- What is simulation?
- What types of problems can simulation solve?
- Steps in a typical simulation study
- Fundamental concepts (transactions, resources, events, future-event list)
- Transactions
- Resources
- Events
- Future Event List
- Building simulation models in Commercially Available programs
- Resource allocation problems
- Modeling uncertainty: Sample statistics, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing
- Input Modeling: Choosing the Correct Probability Distributions
- Fitting appropriate distributions when data is available
- Pitfalls in input modeling: What you don’t know can hurt you
- What to do when little data is available
- Generating Random Variables and Arrival Processesnot as easy as you think
- Verification: Is your program doing what you think?
- Validation: Is your model doing what you wanted?
- Selecting the Right Simulation Package