When is Simulation the Appropriate Tool?

• Simulation enables the study of, and experiment with, the internal interations of a complex, dynamic system, or a subsystem.

  E.g. when setting up a telephone sales department (such as the 1998 World Cup Soccer Game), how many operators are enough to handle the calls? Many factors can play a role here: the number of tickets left, estimated number of people who want the ticket, capacity of the phone lines, how long would it take to service one call, etc.

• Informational, organizational, and environmental changes can be simulated and the effect of these alterations on the model's behavior can be observed.

  E.g. to study the behavior of a web server, we can simulate the client traffic and see how it responds.

• The knowledge gained in designing a simulation model may be of great value toward suggesting improvement in the system under the investigation.

  E.g. before actually building a cache system, one can simulation the various configuration of the cache, study its behavior and find out the optimum solution.

• By changing simulation inputs and observing the resulting outputs, valuable insight may be obtained into which variables are most important and how variabls interact.

  E.g. in studying the performance of a computer network, a number of parameters affect the outcome, cable length, transmission speed, packet size, arrival rate, number of stations, etc. which one is the most important on the delay? It's the ratio of arrival rate and service rate.

• Simulation can be used as pedagogical device to reinforce analytic solution methodologies

• Simulation can be used to experiment with new designs or policies prior to implmentation, so as to prepare for what may happen.

• Simulation can be used to verify analytic solutions.