MODELING AND SIMULATION SOFTWARE FOR LINKED LISTS, STACKS, AND QUEUES RATIONALE OF THE STUDY

Simulation is used in different ways by different people. As used here, simulation is defined as the process of creating a model (i.e., an abstract representation or facsimile) of an existing or proposed system (e.g., a project, a business, a mine, a watershed, a forest, the organs in your body) in order to identify and understand those factors which control the system and/or to predict (forecast) the future behavior of the system. It does not refer to live, interactive simulations (e.g., flight or battle field simulators).

The document does not provide a list of features we should look for, since the requirements of each user are likely to be quite different. Rather, it focuses on the overall process that you should go through in order to select the appropriate simulation tool. As such, it is intended to be applicable to a wide variety of simulation applications.

This study is important for the organization to understand that the cost of a simulation tool is not just the cost of the software itself, but the cost to become a fluent user of the software. In fact, given the complexity of the more powerful simulation tools, the investment in time is likely to be greater than the investment in the software itself.

The issue we are trying to address represents a one-time need, it may be more cost-efficient to hire a consultant to do the work. However, if the issue is recurring or ongoing such that the model will need frequent refinement, or if for some other reason it is important to the organization that the work be done internally, it will be necessary to create a simulation software too and train individuals in its use.

The use of simulation modeling and analysis is becoming increasingly more popular as a technique for improving or investigating process performance. This book is a practical, easy-to-follow reference that offers up-to-date information and step-by-step procedures for conducting simulation studies. It provides sample simulation project support material, including checklists, datacollection forms, and sample simulation project reports and publications to facilitate practitioners' efforts in conducting simulation modeling and analysis projects. Simulation Modeling Handbook: A Practical Approach has two major advantages over other treatments. First, it is independent of any particular simulation software, allowing readers to use any commercial package or programming language. Second, it was written to insulate practitioners from unnecessary simulation theory that does not focus on their average, practical needs. As the popularity of simulation studies continues to grow, the planning and execution of these projects, more and more engineering and management professionals will be called upon to perform these tasks. With its simple, nononsense approach and focus on application rather than theory, this comprehensive and easy-to-understand guide is the ideal vehicle for acquiring

the

background

and

skills

needed

to

undertake

effective

simulation

projects.FeaturesPresents step-by-step procedures for conducting successful simulation modeling and analysisAddresses every phase of performing simulations, from formulating the problem to presenting study results and recommendations Uses approaches applicable regardless of the specific simulation or software used. Includes a summary of the major simulation software packages and discusses the pros and cons of using general purpose Programming-languages.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This study is anchored by The Practice of Model Development and Use: Professor Stewart Robinson, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick - 1970's Simulation, through the use of simulation software, is the science of creating statistically accurate models to represent the behaviour of real life systems in order to subject them to predictive experimentation. These experiments or scenarios can then enable 'what if?' questions to be answered without risk or disturbance to the real life system. Discrete Event Simulation works by modelling the individual events that occur at given time intervals, taking into account resources, constraints and the way they interact. It also includes the randomness and variability you will see in real life. In this way, it behaves like a real process, such as a manufacturing line; a call centre or an airport baggage handling

system. Lanner's simulation software, WITNESS, L-SIM, PRISM and Px-SIM products all use Discrete Event Simulation. Processes that involve variability, disruptions and interaction complexity are ideal for simulation. Other techniques for measuring processes, such as spread sheets and flow diagrams, often ignore or treat these factors as averages, with important consequences. Let's take an example of an ATM to illustrate the importance of including variability and disruption. It will also illustrate the strength of simulation in providing evidence and in communicating the consequences. As the graph shows, the consequence of not including variability in this simple system, even without considering disruption such as a machine jamming, is significant. Imagine the consequences when you consider looking to predict the throughput of a new baggage handling system or call centre! Simulation, through the use of simulation software, provides significant advantages over real life experimentation in terms of cost, time and repeatability when variability, disruption and complexity exist. Imagine taking a production line or a hospital accident and emergency unit, then experimenting with various 'what ifs'. It would be impractical and possibly dangerous. It is however important to point out that organisations that regularly need simulation gain greater benefit when simulation is embedded in a sector specific application, rather than having to skill up to use a general purpose tool. Such applications are pre configured to request the correct data, already incorporate logic to explore the most relevant 'what ifs' and can be used by front line employees. For those organisations that have or are investing in

simulation skills, again experience would recommend the selection of a general product that can be extended into an end user application. There are at least 82 discrete software simulation products on the market. Certain packages offer different benefits in different situations, while most packages require a level of scientific background in simulation theory. This situation is changing however. As the simulation market has matured, leading providers have started to deliver software simulation products pre configured for particular sectors. These new solutions offer industry specific simulation capabilities, via an intuitive interface that is easy for frontline staff to use. Descriptions and videos of software simulation products often describe a process of clicking a run button, seeing the clock run and an animation of your process on your screen, then being presented with graphical results. This misses the two most difficult steps; how to represent the real life process within the simulation model and what data is needed to provide meaningful results! Simulation software applications such as Lanner's Px-SIM, PRISM and L-SIM are designed for and focused on a particular sector, so have already done these difficult steps for you. WITNESS whilst able to model virtually any situation with the appropriate skills, is importantly designed to be extended and wrapped into application. WITNESS an established dynamic process simulation software tool used by thousands of organisations to validate a business processes L-SIM for the simulation of BPMN workflows. PRISM a suite of simulation software modules for Policing (includes call handling, incidence response, investigation, forensics and custody). Px-SIM is a simulation

software tool for rapidly understanding the difficult to predict variations that occur within pharmaceutical, consumer health and medical products manufacturing. Advanced computer programs can simulate weather conditions, electronic circuits, chemical reactions, mechatronics, heat pumps, feedback control

systems, atomic reactions, even biological processes. In theory, any phenomena that can be reduced to mathematical data and equations can be simulated on a computer. Simulation can be difficult because most natural phenomena are subject to an almost infinite number of influences. One of the tricks to developing useful simulations is to determine which are the most important factors that affect the goals of the simulation. `essentially, a program that allows the user to observe an operation through simulation without actually performing that operation. Simulation software is used widely to design equipment so that the final product will be as close to design specs as possible without expensive in process modification. Simulation software with real-time response is often used in gaming, but it also has important industrial applications. When the penalty for improper operation is costly, such as airplane pilots, nuclear power plant operators, or chemical plant operators, a mock up of the actual control panel is connected to a real-time simulation of the physical response, giving valuable training experience without fear of a disastrous outcome. In addition to imitating processes to see how they behave under different conditions, simulations are also used to test new theories. After creating a theory of causal relationships, the theorist can codify the relationships in the form of a

computer program. If the program then behaves in the same way as the real process, there is a good chance that the proposed relationships are correct. General simulation packages fall into two categories: discrete

event and continuous simulation. Discrete event simulations are used to model statistical events such as customers arriving in queues at a bank. By properly correlating arrival probabilities with observed behavior, a model can determine optimal queue count to keep queue wait times at a specified level. Continuous simulators such as VisSim are used to model a wide variety of physical phenomena like ballistic trajectories, human respiration, electric motor response, radio frequency data communication, steam turbine power generation etc. Simulations are used in initial system design to optimize component selection and controller gains, as well as in Model Based Design systems to generate embedded control code. Real-time operation of continuous simulation is used for operator training and off-line controller tuning.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Perhaps the most important step in selecting simulation software is to clearly state the problem (or class of problems) that would like to address. This must include a general statement of what you would like the simulation tool to do.

Without doing so, it will be impossible to determine, first, the type of simulation tool we should look for, and subsequently, to list the functional requirements and desired attributes of the tool.

1. Establish the commitment to invest in simulation software to solve problem. 2. Clearly state the problem (or class of problems) that would like to solve. 3. Determine the general type of simulation tool required to solve the problem. 4. Carry out an initial survey of potential solutions. 5. Develop a list of functional requirements

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY Simulation is a decision analysis. Simulation software allows you to evaluate, compare and optimize alternative designs, plans and policies. As such, it provides a tool for explaining and defending decisions to various stakeholders. Simulation should be used when the consequences of a proposed action, plan or design cannot be directly and immediately observed (i.e., the consequences are delayed in time and/or dispersed in space) and/or it is simply impractical or prohibitively expensive to test the alternatives directly. For example, when implementing a strategic plan for a company, the impacts are likely to take months (or years) to materialize. User can be able to easily handle unit conversions User can should be able to support distributed processing. User can use support optimization. User can provide tools for sensitivity analysis.

Because simulation is such a powerful tool to assist in understanding complex systems and to support decision-making, a wide variety of approaches and tools exist. Before trying to survey all available tools, you must first decide upon the general type of tool that you require.

There are a variety of simulation frameworks, each tailored for a specific type of problem. What they all have in common, however, is that they allow the user to model how a system might evolve or change over time. Such frameworks can be thought of as high-level programming languages that allow the user to simulate many different kinds of systems in a flexible way. Perhaps the simplest and most broadly used general purpose simulator. Although inherently limited in many ways by their structure (e.g., representing complex dynamic processes is difficult, they cannot display the model structure graphically, and they require special add-ins to represent uncertainty), because of the ubiquity they are very widely used for simple simulation projects (particularly in the business world). Other general purpose tools exist that are better able to represent complex dynamics, as well as provide a graphical mechanism for viewing the model structure (e.g., an influence diagram or flow chart of some type). Although these tools are generally harder to learn to use, these advantages allow them to realistically simulate larger and more complex systems.

SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The limitation of this study is no way to know when you are done. It is not feasible to completely test, via simulation, all possible states and inputs of any non-trivial system.

Simulation can take an inordinately large amount of computing resources, since typically it uses a single processor to reproduce the behavior of many (perhaps millions of) parallel hardware processes. Every design project must answer the question have we simulated enough to find all the bugs? and every project manager has taped out his design knowing that the truthful answer to that question is either no or I dont know. It is this fundamental problem with simulation that has caused so much effort to be spent looking for both tools to help answer the question and .

Code coverage, functional coverage and logic coverage tools have all been developed to help gauge the completeness of simulation testing. None are complete solutions, though they all help. Formal alternatives have been less successful. Just like in the general software world, where proving programs correct has proven intractable, formal methods for verifying hardware designs have still not proven general enough to replace simulation. That is not surprising, since it is the same problem.

The second drawback motivates most of the research and development in simulation. That is, simulation is always orders of magnitude slower than the system being simulated. If a hardware system runs at 1GHz, a simulation of that

system might run at 10-1000 Hz, depending on the level of the simulation and the size of the system. That is a slowdown of from 106 to 108! Consequently, many people have spent a lot of time and effort finding ways to speed up logic simulation.

METHOD RESEARCH DESIGN A simulation design may represent any engineering system, component, or process. In aircraft parts manufacturing, for instance, the simulation design may be concerned with the components of an aircraft before it can fly for commercial or personal use. Machining of parts before they can be connected to other vital parts needs to be designed and simulated. Simulation designs are engineering designs that require the incorporation of engineering and mathematical sciences. There are research tools that can be used to help the engineer identify and assemble the different components of an aircraft. The research tools can create digital representations of the product as well as manage and control different processes. These processes may be manufacturing processes and control processes. Research tools assist in the manufacture of different aircraft components such as the actuator, cockpit, fuselage, and gas turbine. Simulation designs help

in identifying different tools required for an aircraft as well as manufacturing and designing these tools. However, engineers control simulation limits, including beginning and ending times and sampling frequency. Different research tools are used for simulation designs. There are, for instance, tools that help in the production of dies for aerospace castings.

RESEARCH RESPONDENTS A survey of nonacademic users of computer simulation explored such issues as interest in simulation as a method of analysis, the functional areas which use simulation, the departments where simulation models are developed, the method of selecting a programming language for coding a simulation model, the popularity of various programming languages for simulation applications, and problems associated with the application of simulation Current practices for measuring the effectiveness and suggestions for improving the use of simulation are discussed.

RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS We perceived that many of our students develop a shallow and isolated understanding of important foundational concepts related to statistical inference, in particular, ideas of sample, population, distribution, sampling, and sampling variability. We were concerned that many students who pass a statistics course do not develop the deep understanding needed to integrate these concepts and apply them in their reasoning. As teachers who have taught introductory statistics

courses for several years, we were particularly disappointed by our students' continual inability to explain or apply their understanding of sampling distributions. We found this lack of understanding particularly troublesome as we see the concept of sampling distributions as crucial to the understanding of statistical inference. We began to develop our own methods for teaching sampling distributions that would facilitate integration of these ideas and enhance understanding of the basic processes involved. These methods combined handson activities in class with use of interactive simulation software. However, students were still demonstrating a clear lack of understanding and an inability to apply their knowledge when solving statistical problems.

We decided to investigate the published literature to see if others have struggled with this problem and to see what we might learn from this body of literature. We found several existing simulation packages that have been used to teach sampling distributions (e.g., Behrens 1997, Cumming and Thomason 1998, Finch and Cumming 1998, Velleman 1998). However, all appear to be used to illustrate the sampling process and creation of a sampling distribution in similar ways. They are typically used either as a demonstration offered by the instructor during a class or as a lab activity that students experience individually or working in pairs. These implementations require students to focus on what happens when different populations are used and with different sample sizes. This makes sense as a logical way to use the software. Indeed, it is the way we first conceptualized and used our own simulation software.

DATA GATHERING PROCEDURE

It is argued that the data collection process is the most crucial stage in the model building process. This is primarily due to the influence that data has in providing accurate simulation results. Data collection is an extremely time consuming process predominantly because the task is manually orientated. Hence, automating this process of data collection would be extremely advantageous. This paper presents how simulation could utilize the Corporate Business Systems as the simulation data source. Subsequently a unique interface could be implemented to provide these data directly to the simulation tool. Such an interface would prove to be an invaluable tool for users of simulation. Simulations and simulators require a variety of data categories. The authors discuss the contents of categories such as aerodynamic properties; features and specifics of avionics down to pulse width, frequency, and color of items on the cockpit panels; logistic concerns, such as Weibull distribution parameters for failure rate computations, cost of spares, and mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) figures; order of battle; and natural environment. Specifics depend on whether the simulation is at a coarse, medium, or fine level of emulation. Coarse models use mathematical formulas, while fine models may use Monte Carlo techniques and Eulerian/Lagrangian schemes to build up valid long-term statistics from individual case simulations. The authors examine the relative importance of data items to the simulation, and the considerations and pitfalls of various sources of data. Model sensitivity and the possibility of substituting heuristic models for actual data are examined. Methods of validation and the choice of test data versus operational data are discussed. The enhancement of the general data archive and the enhancement of the documentation of the characteristics and errors in known models and archives are also considered.

DATA ANALYSIS

The analysis of simulation data in the evaluation of competing alternatives presents a problem for the analyst using conventional statistical techniques. The assumptions of normality and common variances generally cause difficulties since many classes of simulation experiments typically violate both of these assumptions. In addition, the analyst is usually interested in comparing competing alternatives using environments that are as close to identical as possible. In these situations, blocking is desirable and can usually be accomplished by using common random number streams. In statistics, spatial analysis or spatial statisticsincludes any of the formal techniques which study entities using their topological, geometric, or geographicproperties. The phrase properly refers to a variety of techniques, many still in their early development, using different analytic approaches and applied in fields as diverse as astronomy, with its studies of the placement of galaxies in the cosmos, to chip fabrication engineering, with its use of 'place and route' algorithms to build complex wiring structures. The phrase is often used in a more restricted sense to describe techniques applied to structures at the human scale, most notably in the analysis of geographic data. The phrase is even sometimes used to refer to a specific technique in a single area of research, for example, to describe geostatistics.

This site features information about discrete event system modeling and simulation. It includes discussions on descriptive simulation modeling,

programming commands, techniques for sensitivity estimation, optimization and goal-seeking by simulation, and what-if analysis.

Advancements in computing power, availability of PC-based modeling and simulation, and efficient computational methodology are allowing leading-edge of prescriptive simulation modeling such as optimization to pursue investigations in systems analysis, design, and control processes that were previously beyond reach of the modelers and decision makers.

Computer system users, administrators, and designers usually have a goal of highest performance at lowest cost. Modeling and simulation of system design trade off is good preparation for design and engineering decisions in real world jobs.

In this Web site we study computer systems modeling and simulation. We need a proper knowledge of both the techniques of simulation modeling and the simulated systems themselves.

The scenario described above is but one situation where computer simulation can be effectively used. In addition to its use as a tool to better understand and optimize performance and/or reliability of systems, simulation is also extensively used to verify the correctness of designs. Most if not all digital integrated circuits manufactured today are first extensively simulated before they are manufactured to identify and correct design errors. Simulation early in the design cycle is important because the cost to repair mistakes increases

dramatically the later in the product life cycle that the error is detected. Another important application of simulation is in developing "virtual environments" , e.g., for training. Analogous to the holodeck in the popular science-fiction television program Star Trek, simulations generate dynamic environments with which users can interact "as if they were really there." Such simulations are used extensively today to train military personnel for battlefield situations, at a fraction of the cost of running exercises involving real tanks, aircraft, etc.