This is a masters course for Logistics students. Offered spring 2018.

You will learn how to write programs (software) that simulate various parts of the supply chain, such as inventories, order processing, production and transport.  The belief is that supply chain management (SCM) and logistics analytics (LA) may benefit from simulations.

The purpose of a simulation is to predict performance of the supply chain (throughput, lead times, operational costs).

Simulation is one of many technical tools in operations management.

It is a programming tool. You will learn to use variables, data structures, loops, boolean logic, functions and input/output. Most students find it difficult to learn programming.

It is not a mathematical tool, but programming is easier to learn if you are good at math.

You must know statistics (pre-requisite). You should not take this course if you do not understand probability theory and hypothesis testing well.

We have some previous exams online.

Most lectures are recorded. Here are my notes from the lectures and other presentations in the course.

You may use "Discussion" (see left margin) to ask and discuss questions about the course, assignments, software, reading lists etc. 

You have to study research articles in this course (no book). First, two papers to introduce simulation and queueing analysis.

• Jerry Banks (Brooks Automation), Introduction to simulation, Wintersim 2000 
  • Lecture notes Banks paper (8/1-2018).  And a video.
• Little and Graves (M.I.T.), Little's Law, in Chajjed and Love (eds.), Building Intuition: Insights from Basic Op.Mgmt Models and Principles, 2010
  • Lecture notes (8/1-2018)

Two papers that relate simulation to SCM and LA

• Benita Beamon (Univ. Washington), Supply Chain Design and Analysis: Models and Methods", in International Journal of Production Economics (1998) Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 281-294. Presented 14/1 in class (no notes).
• Shao, Shin and Jain (NIST USA, George Wash.Univ., USA), Data analytics using simulation for smart manufacturing, Wintersim, 2014.  My notes.

Materials for using the Arena simulation tool (installed in our labs, free to download to your own PC).

• Arena Users Guide (PDF) by Rockwell Corp.

These are some other papers you must read:

• Averill M. Law, A tutorial on how to select simulation input probability distributions, Wintersim 2013.  And, my notes.
• (added April 9): Christine S. M. Currie and Russell C. H. Cheng (University of Southampton), A practical introduction to analysis of simulation output data. Wintersim 2013. [ my notes ]

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