Utilizing simulation to evaluate business decisions in sense-and-respond systems

Simulation can be an effective way to evaluate alternative decisions in sense-and-respond systems prior to taking actions to resolve existing or anticipated business situations. In sense-and-respond systems, business situations arise within predefined contexts that specify what aspects of the business need to be monitored and what information is needed to make decisions. We have designed a decision support system that dynamically configures simulation models based on business context and interactively presents simulation results to business analysts. In this paper, our decision support system is applied to the IBM demand conditioning process, in which mismatches between supply and demand are identified and corrective actions are initiated.