A Comparison of System Dynamics (SD) and Discrete Event Simulation (DES)

System Dynamics modeling and Discrete Event Simulation both can be used to model corporate business decisions. However, there seems to be little dialog between the two communities of modelers. For instance, at the recent WinterSim simulation conference in Washington, DC, there were no presentations of System Dynamics models. Discussions held by the author with a number of practitioners in each field show that there is a general lack of appreciation of the strengths of each methodology. This paper provides a summary and comparison of the two approaches. The thrust of the paper is that the capabilities of each methodology uniquely suit them to different types of problems. The challenge to the modeler is to pick the tool most appropriate to the problem at hand.