Better Business Decisions with Simulation: An Introduction for Business Students

Better Business Decisions with Simulation: An Introduction for Business Students is an introduction to discrete event simulation (DES) intended for the MBA and related academic markets. The book presents an overview of DES and highlights the key role it can play in helping organizations improve the processes they employ to produce their goods and services. Following an overview of DES, the book presents an introduction to the SIMIO software system as well as a step-by-step description with pictures of how to build and analyze basic models in SIMIO. Several detailed examples are presented.

The presentation is aimed at the non-technical audience with the intention of illustrating both the usefulness of DES modeling and analysis and the power of SIMIO. Along the way, the book highlights SIMIO’s relative “ease of use” and debunks the notion that one needs to be an engineer or similarly trained analyst to build useful simulation models. With SIMIO’s “select-drag-& click” modeling capability, the power of simulation has been taken to the masses!

This book is ideally suited for a two – four week segment in a university course on Business Analytics, Management Science, healthcare analytics, or Operations Management. It could also be used as introductory materials for a corporate training course on modern simulation. Course materials, including PowerPoint slides and the SIMIO models discussed in the book are available for instructors adopting the book.