Project Assignment

Description: Using FlexSim (can be other tool), write and test a program to simulate a system having the following characteristics at a minimum: 1. Parallel processes/activities and the need to coordinate or synchronize between/among them; 2. Sequential processes/activities such that the outputs of some represent input to others; 3. Stochastic behaviors, to be represented through various probability distributions, including the exponential and the normal. Topic: Select a system from the real world that is interesting to you. Alternatively, you could design a simulation based on some virtual world, as long as you specify the rules that entities follow in interacting. You should make your simulation as complex as possible, subject to the constraint that you complete the project on time! The simulation study should be experimentally-based: you should run your simulation many times, varying certain parameters of the system to gather statistics and come to conclusions about optimal parameter settings. These statistical results should be an important part of your project report. Required: The following should be part of the project and reported in the written paper you submit as part of the assignment: 1. Initial assumptions you made about the required system simulation parameters; 2. The assumptions you found yourself having to change, as a result of testing your model. Your objective is to run the model efficiently (that is, at or near its capacity); 3. A validation of the model (described in a future class meeting); 4. Selected verification of the results (also described later in the semester). Components: The project will include an initial proposal, an interim progress report, a final written report and a brief presentation to the entire class. The first milestone for the project is the Project Description and Proposal (two pages maximum; one page preferred), due MONDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2011. In this proposal, you will describe the simulation you wish to implement, and note relevant features of your chosen system. This will be used in determining the scope of your undertaking. Suggestions for some possible projects may be found below.

Project Ideas
The list below contains some project ideas for this class. You are welcome to, and in fact encouraged to come up with a topic of your own that interests you. It may be either a new idea or a variation of one of the ones listed below. In general the projects should be as "good" as possible (i.e. minimal number of assumptions), but scaled to be reasonable for this class. As an example for project #10 below, do not try to build a 400 airport 15000 airplane airline, rather build a 10 airports and 15 plane airline, including weather problems, mechanical problems with airplanes, cost of fuel, FAA flight crew rest regulations and any other "realistic" components of the system.

Possible Project Topics:

1. Simulate a busy restaurant's seating policy. Assume that the restaurant does not take

2.

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5.

reservations (although adding reservations to the simulation might be interesting). When customers arrive, they check in at the main podium and give their name, number of people in the party, and smoking preference. Some will go to the bar and may or may not choose to eat there instead of waiting for a table. Others will simply sit in benches, waiting for their party to be called. When a party is seated, they should have some random eating time (or you might want to simulate the eating process in more detail -ordering, salad, entree, dessert, etc.) before leaving. Tables and seats in the bar would be resources here. What if a party of 20 shows up? Can some tables (resources) be pushed together to accommodate large parties? Postal Letter handling simulation. Build yourself a letter/package sorting operation. When you handle a few billion pieces of mail every year even a 0.01% improvement in speed can save significant amounts of money. Consider whether a letter sent from Atlanta to Pittsburgh is best queued with other mail and shipped through Washington D.C., Baltimore MD, Philly, Harrisburg PA and then Pittsburgh, or put in its own queue (and truck) and sent directly to Pittsburgh. What about a letter from Pittsburgh to Fargo ND? Test your simulation for minimal expense, but with a limited transit time (say 99% of the letters must arrive in 5 days). Simulate the concession stand(s) at a sporting event (such as Mount Union Stadium). The system may have many different service windows, with a varying number of windows being open at various times during the event. The arrival times of customers should be based on an empirical distribution, with a huge increase in customers during halftime, etc. Web cache simulation. A popular idea in Internet research is a caching web server, a program that will preload a cache with web pages that have been accessed in the recent past. This way, when you wish to access the page you do so directly from you machine and do not need to go across the network. Build a simulation of this to see if it improves (1) the users perceived performance and (2) the network performance. A variable speed television network channel. Video images compressed with constant bit rate MPEG compression do not have the same quality as video images with variable bit rate compression. Build a simulation of a system where the bit rate varies, how large

does the buffer need to be in the receiver? Consider multiple channels, that all use the same buffer memory, how much buffer memory is required? Begin by designing multiple sources with data patterns typically to MPEG video streams. 6. Molecular simulation system or an Atomic simulation system 7. Ambulance simulation system. A continuing debate is where to keep emergency vehicles such as ambulances. Build a simulation system and test whether it is best to keep ambulances (1) at hospitals, (2) fire stations, (3) close to the interstate. 8. A tax simulation system. Another continuing debate is whether to increase taxes. By increasing taxes we mean increasing the tax rate. The question is whether this will raise revenue or decrease revenue (the actual number of tax dollars collected). There are a number of possibilities (1) increasing business income tax vs. businesses moving, (2) increasing personal income tax vs. people moving, (3) creating an internet sales tax. In each of these cases your model probably needs to consider the proportion of local to national businesses and the proportion of people willing to move locally or move nationally for a job. 9. Simulation of a factory. What steps can be taken to reduce cost? Build a simulation where you consider assembly time, warehouse time, cost of lost sales because of product shortage, energy costs and labor costs. 10. Airline system simulation. Build yourself a small airline, run simulations to minimize the cost of operations and to maximize revenue. To maximize revenue you want to fill as many seats on an airplane as possible. To minimize expenses airplanes should fly to the service center(s) loaded with passengers. 11. Thermal performance of a building. 12. Amusement Park Ride Simulation. What are the effects of having one line for a popular roller coaster at Cedar Point, Kennywood or some other park, vs. having separate lines for the first row of a coaster car, the last row of a car, and the middle rows of a car. Each park customer has a preference for the row in which they would like to sit, with the front and rear rows being more popular. Or choose some other amusement park situation to simulate.

Project Stage 2
Identifying Model Components 15 points Due: Monday., December 19, 2011 Description: For your term project, submit a written description of the entities, resources and events in your simulation model, along with any other important pieces of your model. Additionally, you should show the sequence of events that will transpire in your simulation model. Submitting a drawing of the model or a

flowchart of the sequence of events that an entity will perform is not a required part of this assignment, but could be included if it helps explain what the entities in your system are doing. You must somehow show the sequence(s) of events in your model. Format: Use the format seen in class assignments and examples to identify major components of your model. You should have one entry of each of the following types for each component type or event function in your model.

Entity: name of entity Arrives: arrival pattern Departs: departure pattern Attributes: list of attribute descriptions Resource: name of resource Number: number of resources of this kind Aquire Unit: All or None OR Single Unit Capacity: max. capacity of one resource Event: name of event Description: description or pseudocode outline of steps involved in the event
You might also find it helpful to define the structure of attribute records for your entities, list the global variables that will be needed by the simulation program for your model, etc. These extra features are not required, but an identification of the Entities, Resources and Events of your project IS required, as well as the sequence of Events that will occur in the system. Word-process your Stage 2 submission, please -- you may hand-draw any flowcharts that you will include, if that's the way you choose to show the sequencing of events.

Final Implementation Requirements 80 points Due: Monday., December 26, 2011

Required:

You must have a working implementation of your term project model that you will submit by the due date, as well as a written report detailing the development of your implementation and explaining the results you obtained. In addition, you must be ready to present your project to the class. Report: Include the follow.ing sections in your report:

Overview

An explanation of your project topic, including explicit mention of your purpose and objectives underlying this simulation, and your expectations about results when you designed your model, but before you implemented it. In other words, what were you attempting to discover via this simulation, and what did you think the results would be before you ran your program?

Model Design

Describe your model in detail, identifying the entities and resources necessary for a valid simulation of the model. Also, include a graphic or diagrammatic version of your model, showing how entities flow through your system.

Implementation

Describe how to use your program to obtain results -- are there commandline parameters that you specify when running your program, does the user have to answer some questions at the start of the simulation, does the program read from some data file stored on disk, etc. Also, you should identify where randomness enters into your model, and why you are sure that your choice for random value ranges are valid ones (so that your implementation acts like the real system would in the real world).

Results

Explain major trends in the results you obtained from running your simulation, in a narrative form. Include the reports generated by your implementation, and printed source code, in appendices at the end of the report.

Analysis

Take your simulation results, and add your opinions as to what they mean and how the organization sponsoring this simulation could use the results to help it perform better.

Conclusions

Wrap up your report with your comments on the simulation process you experienced in completing this project, and note any outcomes that did not meet your expectations from when you started the project. What does your simulation say about a preferred course of action regarding the system under study? Concluir su informe con sus comentarios sobre el proceso de simulacin que experiment en la realizacin de este proyecto, y tome nota de los resultados que no cumplieron con sus expectativas desde que se inici el proyecto. Qu hace la simulacin decir acerca de un curso de accin preferido en relacin con el sistema en estudio?

Program: Give me a copy of your source codefiles and/or FlexSim project files for grading. Submit this data either on a disk, by dragging a folder that you've created with all files into by attaching it to an e-mail message you send to my e-mail account. Grading: The report and working implementation are worth a combined total of 65 points, and the presentation will be worth 15 points. See below a breakdown of how those points are allocated to different parts of the project Grading Point Breakdown Report: 80 points

The report is worth a total of 40 points. Each section is worth the following number of points:

Overview

6 points

Model Design 5 points

Implementation 7 points

Results 7 points

Analysis 8 points

Conclusions 7 points Full credit for a section means that the writing clearly conveys the subject being discussed in the section, there are no typographic or grammatical errors, and that it is obvious that the writer understand the subject (s)he is discussing.

Program: 25 points. Limited partial credit is available for programs that don't work completely, but you should be able to develop a working implementation of your simulation model and obtain some results. Presentation: The presentation is to be brief and to the point, approx. 10-12 minutes each; it is worth a total of 15 points, broken down as follows: Clarity of Explanations -- does the speaker exhibit a real understanding of the simulation process and the problem that (s)he undertook?

3 points

Description of Model

3 points

Explanation of Results

3 points

Conclusions drawn from Results

3 points Display of a Working Implementation of the model -- running the program in front of the class and showing the screen output and log file displays.

3 points