PROCESS INTERACTION APPROACH and
SIMAN/ARENA SOFTWARE
Process-Interaction approach is based on; i- giving descriptions of all
‘processes’ that all entities undergo in the system, ii- simulating the
system by focusing on ‘interactions’ between different processes.
Modeling and simulation using process-interaction thus requires firstly
providing descriptions of all processes that different entities undergo.
Simulation programming using process-interaction approach requires
special-purpose simulation software. Such software (like
SIMAN/ARENA) are high-level packeges that provide a ‘descriptive’
programming platform (instead of traditional ‘procedural’
programming).
Simulation using event-scheduling is easily done by any procedural
programming language (such as C++, Java, True Basic, Fortran, R,
Python). But programming for process-interaction simulation using
such general-purpose procedural languages would be very difficult.
Special-purpose simulation software packages such as
SIMAN/ARENA offer the users the necessary built-in structures,
functions and macros to facilitate process-interaction modeling and
simulation.
We will use SIMAN/ARENA as an example. Like all processinteraction
software, ‘entity’ is the most essential concept. They enter the system
and travel from ‘process to process’, until they complete their lifecycle,
at which point they leave the system.
Entities have attributes, which are either built-in or user-defined,
which determine the processing rules for different entities.
PROCESS INTERACTION APPROACH and SIMAN ARENA SOFTWARE
