SIMULATION MODELS IN

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
Lesson 3
General Principles in Simulation

Tran Van Ly
Industrial Engineering & Management
International University
Email: [email protected] 1
Room: A2-504
• Discrete-event simulation

• The basic building blocks of all discrete-event simulation models:

entities and attributes, activities and events.

• A system is modeled in terms of

– its state at each point in time
– the entities that pass through the system and the entities that
represent system resources
– the activities and events that cause system state to change.

• Discrete-event models are appropriate for those systems for which

changes in system state occur only at discrete points in time.

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3.1 Concepts in Discrete-Event Simulation (1)

• System: A collection of entities (e.g., people and machines) that interact together over
time to accomplish one or more goals.

• Model: An abstract representation of a system, usually containing structural, logical, or

mathematical relationships which describe a system in terms of state, entities and their
attributes, sets, processes, events, activities, and delays.

• System state: A collection of variables that contain all the information necessary to
describe the system at any time.

• Entity: Any object or component in the system which requires explicit representation in
the model (e.g., a server, a customer, a machine).

• Attributes: The properties of a given entity (e.g., the priority of a waiting customer, the
routing of a job through a job shop).

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3.1 Concepts in Discrete-Event Simulation (2)

• List: A collection of (permanently or temporarily) associated entities, ordered in some

logical fashion (such as all customers currently in a waiting line, ordered by first come, first
served, or by priority).

• Event: An instantaneous occurrence that changes the state of a system (such as an arrival
of a new customer).

• Event notice: A record of an event to occur at the current or some future time, along with
any associated data necessary to execute the event; at a minimum, the record includes
the event type and the event time.

• Event list: A list of event notices for future events, ordered by time of occurrence also
known as the future event list (FEL).

• Activity: A duration of time of specified length (e.g., a service time or interarrival time),
which is known when it begins (although it may be defined in terms of a statistical
distribution).

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3.1 Concepts in Discrete-Event Simulation (3)

• Delay: A duration of time of unspecified indefinite length, which is not known until it ends
(e.g., a customer's delay in a last-in, first-out waiting line which, when it begins, depends
on future arrivals).

• Clock: A variable representing simulated time, called CLOCK in the examples to follow.

• An activity typically represents a service time, an interarrival time, or any other processing
time whose duration has been characterized and defined by the modeler.

• An activity's duration may be specified in a number of ways:

– Deterministic – for example, always exactly 5 minutes;
– Statistical - for example, as a random draw from among 2, 5, 7 with equal
probabilities;
– A function depending on system variables and/or entity attributes - for example,
loading time for an iron ore ship as a function of the ship's allowed cargo weight and
the loading rate in tons per hour.

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3.1 Concepts in Discrete-Event Simulation (4)

an end of inspection event

event time = 105

Event notice

100 105 time

current simulated time Inspection time (=5)

• The duration of an activity is computable from its specification at the instant it

begins.

• To keep track of activities and their expected completion time, at the simulated
instant that an activity duration begins, an event notice is created having an
event time equal to the activity's completion time.

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3.1 Concepts in Discrete-Event Simulation (5)

• A delay's duration
– Not specified by the modeler ahead of time, but rather determined by
system conditions.
– Quite often, a delay's duration is measured and is one of the desired
outputs of a model run.

How long to wait?

• A customer's delay in a waiting line may be dependent on the number and

duration of service of other customers ahead in line as well as the availability of
servers and equipment.

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3.1 Concepts in Discrete-Event Simulation (6)

Delay Activity

What so called a conditional wait an unconditional wait

A completion a secondary event a primary event

by placing the associated entity
on another list, not the FEL, by placing an event
A management
perhaps representing a waiting notice on the FEL
line

 System state, entity attributes and the number of active entities, the
contents of sets, and the activities and delays currently in progress are all
functions of time and are constantly changing over time.
 Time is represented by a variable called CLOCK.

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 3.1 Concepts in Discrete-Event Simulation (7)

EXAMPLE 3.1 (Able and Baker, Revisited)

– Consider the Able-Baker carhop system.

– System state
• LQ (t ) : the number of cars waiting to be served at time t
• LA (t ) : 0 or 1 to indicate Able being idle or busy at time t
• LB (t ) : 0 or 1 to indicate Baker being idle or busy at time t

– Entities: Neither the customers (i.e., cars) nor the servers need to
be explicitly represented, except in terms of the state variables,
unless certain customer averages are desired.

– Events
• Arrival event
• Service completion by Able
• Service completion by Baker 9
 3.1 Concepts in Discrete-Event Simulation (8)

EXAMPLE 3.1 (Able and Baker, Revisited)

– Activities
• Interarrival time, defined in Table 2.11
• Service time by Able, defined in Table 2.12
• Service time by Baker, defined in Table 2.13

– Delay: A customer's wait in queue until Able or Baker becomes free

•The definition of the model components provides a static description of the model.

•A description of the dynamic relationships and interactions between the

components is also needed.

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3.1 Concepts in Discrete-Event Simulation (9)

• A discrete-event simulation: the modeling over time of a system all of whose state
changes occur at discrete points in time - those points when an event occurs.

• A discrete-event simulation proceeds by producing a sequence of system snapshots

(system images) which represent the evolution of the system through time.

Figure 3.1 Prototype system snapshot at simulation time t 11