SimWiz

SimWiz (Simulation Wizard) is a software application for defining, communicating, validating and running a discrete event simulation model.

Simulations like defining, communicating, validating and running a discrete events are useful in industrial engineering, service system planning, traffic control, communication engineering, processor design, and process flow control.

The aim of simulation is to reveal flaws or allow experimentation in the design of the system which can be tested "on paper" before investing in the creation of an actual system, saving effort and cost.

SimWiz is not just another simulation program or modeling language. Rather it is a totally new approach to help the user in various steps of a simulation project (US patent pending).

The model can be run in the inbuilt simulator or can be translated to an Arena model. It offers to build a model in record time, without errors.

Simulation is imitating reality such as work in a bank, in a port, in a warehouse etc. In these examples the bank or port or warehouse is called system.

SimWiz simulates discrete event systems where the system (such as a machine) has a discrete number of states (for example a machine that is either working on some part, or idle or broken down - 3 states in this example) and transitions between states are instantaneous.

The transitions are called events. Thus, changes in the states are not continuous, not like the speed of a car that changes continuously (although continuous change can be approximated by transitions between discrete values such as 0, 5, 10 mph.

The events occur at various times that may depend on the situation (a machine can break down only during work and not when it is idle) and may be unpredictable (the exact duration of repairing is unpredictable so the event of transition back to working condition is not known ahead either). Thus time and random phenomena (that model unpredictability) play important roles in discrete event system simulation.

SimWiz helps to describe what happens to customers in a bank, ships in a port or containers in a warehouse and simulate the described system. The customers, ships or containers are called entities.

The description is the series of delays, the delays' causes and durations that are the reason why customers cannot leave the system immediately. For example a customer who wishes to cash a check personally has to wait in a queue that means a delay.

The teller cannot serve immediately either, the time that takes to serve the customer is another delay. This is the reason why the cashing cannot occur instantly, rather it takes time from entrance to the bank until exiting.

Thus, the interaction between entities and delays, their sequence and duration are the essence of the system's description.

SimWiz solicits information from the user about the entity types, delays, delay sequence and other objects to build the simulation model that describes the situation.

The solicitation is broken down to steps while at each step a specific information is provided by the author. At the conclusion SimWiz builds a model that is ready to simulate the system.