Enm 307 Simulation
Spring 2016
Project Guidelines
Objective: The term project is a group study that focuses on simulating a process involving complicated
flows in a real system. The system to be simulated is typically a service or production system with discrete
and dynamic events. The goals include understanding the process and the flows, analyzing the data,
developing a conceptual model, translating the model into simulation software, validation and verification
of the model, analyzing the output and evaluating and comparing different scenarios. At the end of the
project, each group will present the project in class in addition to submitting a written final report.
Format: This is a group project to be done in groups of 4 or 5 students. Sharing the workload equally is the
responsibility of the group. Each group member is expected to participate in the final presentation. The
timeline for the project is as follows:
March 1st: Formation of groups: Each group should report their group members to the instructor or the
TAs of the course.
March 15: Each group should submit a one-page proposal including the place of the project, aim of the
project and the work to be done throughout the project.
End of semester: Each group will present their project in class during the final week of classes and submit
a written final report.
Outputs:
1. Final presentation: The presentation should summarize the work undertaken focusing on your
contributions rather than on general information (about the company, the history of the business
etc.). The 10 minute presentation must clearly describe:
a. The process
b. Data available and its analysis
c. Missing data and assumptions about missing data
d. Modeling assumptions and the model
e. Validation and verification of the models
f. Output Analysis
g. Alternative Scenarios and their comparison
h. Recommendations to the Company
2.
Final report: The final written report must describe in full detail:
a. The process
b. Data available and its analysis
c. Missing data and assumptions about missing data
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
Modeling assumptions and the model
Validation and verification of the models
Output Analysis
Alternative Scenarios and their comparison
Process Design recommendations to the Company
In addition, the data and data analysis files and the complete and running versions of the ARENA
files must be submitted.
Final Presentation Guidelines
1. Presentations are programmed for 10 minutes with a few more minutes for questions. The
timing is strict and constitutes part of the presentation grade.
2. Projects vary and presentation styles may differ but the following guidelines must be
followed:

presentations must focus on your work (not the company, the history of the business
etc., general information taken from web sites etc.).

presentations should describe the objective of the study (Why is this case being
studied? Are there problems with the current situation?)

presentations must clearly describe the process and the flows (not the Arena
flowchart but a regular flowchart for a general-purpose simulation model)

you should clearly describe the available data and assumptions first, followed by the
analysis of the data (descriptive statistics and plots of the data, fitted distributions with
their plots and goodness-of-fit measures, etc.)

you should describe the simulation model and its validation (do the performance
measures correctly reflect the situation today?)

you should describe the alternative scenarios considered and the evaluation of these
scenarios (evaluation can be done for the report, but alternatives should be explained
clearly)

you should end with suggestions for improvement or further exploration.
Final Report Guidelines
1. The reports are due at the final exam date of the course. Please bring a printed copy of
the report and the data CD (including the data and ARENA files).
2. The CD must include all ARENA files (in ARENA version 13) and data files as well as the
final report. Please label all files clearly.
3. The report must have a proper format (title page, table of contents, section titles,
spellcheck, figure and table numbering etc.)
4. There is no page limit but you must describe all steps of the project clearly. Most reports
are around 10-20 pages. Here are some suggestions for the report:

Describe the setting and the objective of the study clearly.

Give a detailed description of the data. How was the data obtained? If it was given to
you, who is the owner? What exactly is in the data for each input (e.g. daily demand for
toothpaste organized by brand over 90 consecutive days or time of arrival, waiting time in
the queue, and the processing time of each call in seconds for a call center operating 12
hours a day over 28 days etc.)? If you collected the data yourself, explain your work in
detail (we collected data for 5 20-minute intervals each day of the week from 12 to 12.20,
we recorded arrival times of customers and the service times of three cashiers etc.).

Explain the process you simulate using a flow chart (you can use a clearly visible and
marked ARENA diagram). Describe all flows you plan to include in your model.

Report the results of your data analysis. Report summary statistics (average, standard
deviation, minimum and maximum values) for each important input. Report the
distributions that are fit along with measures of quality of the fit. Comment on these points
(the Weibull distribution seems to be a good fit because the K-S test yields a p-value of …,
or the Poisson distribution is a weak fit because its statistical significance is low but we
choose to use it because…). Discuss whether your data has seasonality (i.e dependence on
time of day or day of the week etc.) or independence issues.

State your assumptions and justifications on all inputs that are not supported by data
(the manager told us to use a normal distribution, we think this is reasonable because…,
the arrival data was not available but we decided to model it using exponential arrival
times which makes sense because…).

Describe your model and your assumptions (we assume that all unsatisfied customers
leave the system and don’t come back, the manager confirmed that this was a reasonable
assumption…). Describe the performance measures for your analysis and explain why they
are important (we decided to focus on the standard deviation of the customer waiting time
as a key performance measure because this determines…). Describe the time horizon of
your simulation (because the factory works continuously we decided to run a 1-year
simulation or we focus on the peak times at the restaurant which are from 19:30 to 21:30
on Fridays etc.).

Shortly describe your ARENA model and the validation process (according to our
observations/data the average waiting time in the system is around 3 minutes and our
simulation model confirms this etc.). Briefly assess the performance of the existing system
(our model yields that the utilization of cashier 1 is 0.22 which is very low etc.)

Describe alternative scenarios and explain whether these would be reasonable
alternatives in reality (in practice adding an additional operating room may not be easy
because of space restrictions or hiring an additional cashier is feasible but costly etc.).
Report and compare the results.

Make sure that all reported results are statistically significant. For transient
simulations run several replications (for short simulations more than 100 replications
must be necessary). Note that for statistical significance the half-width of the confidence
interval must be much smaller than the average performance measure. Comment on the
statistical significance of your results and comparison of the alternatives (note that an
average waiting time that falls in a confidence interval of (2,4) is not conclusively smaller
than a waiting time that has confidence interval (2.5,4.5)).

Describe your suggestions to the manager/practitioners.