An Introduction to Discrete-Event Modeling and Simulation

Especially suitable for the modeling and simulation of technical systems in a wider sense, discreteevent simulation is one of the most important and most versatile tools of the craft. Both students and practitioners should be familiar with its principles and mechanics, in particular if they are interested to look beyond their favorite modeling tool’s GUI. This paper presents a short tutorial on modeling and simulation techniques, with a focus on discrete-event simulation. After an introduction to the subject matter, some event-oriented modeling fundamentals are discussed, followed by a description of simulation execution principles. A slim software framework is introduced aimed at simplifying model building and evaluation, followed by the presentation of a small sample of recently completed discrete-event simulation studies. The paper concludes with a short summary of the lessons learned and some pointers to additional literature.