Special purpose simulator development

Seven years of experience at developing special-purpose simulators using standard simulation languages is reviewed. These simulators were designed to be used by manufacturing engineers or managers with little or no simulation modeling experience. These simulators have used Lotus worksheets or model development programs to provide the system data to be simulated. The results are available by either screen displays during the simulation or via data files which can be converted to Lotus graphs or viewed using data analysis programs. The common strategies and procedures used to develop the special purpose simulators are outlined. The simulation language features used to develop the special purpose simulators are discussed, and input model data concerns are reviewed. The output options for the special purpose simulators are also discussed