Short-term Simulation: Bridging the Gap between Operational Control and Strategic Decision Making

An increasing number of enterprise information systems uses modern software tools such as workflow management systems and enterprise resource planning systems to support the control, co-ordination, monitoring, and execution of business processes. As a result, these enterprise information systems have knowledge of the business processes, of the current state of each process, and of historical data. This knowledge enables the application of a special form of decision support: shortterm simulatio n. Short-term simulation exploits the information that is available: decisions that affect the business processes in the near future can be evaluated without the need for any additional modelling efforts. The structured storage of information in an enterprise system enables a relatively simple creation of a simulation model. This paper introduces short-term simulation by showing the relations and differences with strategic simulation and operational control. The data that may be used for this kind of decision support is outlined. Also, a simulation architecture which has been applied in practice is presented.