Convex and monotonic bootstrapped Kriging

Distribution-free bootstrapping of the replicated responses of a given discrete-event simulation model gives bootstrapped Kriging (Gaussian process) metamodels; we require these metamodels to be either convex or monotonic. To illustrate monotonic Kriging, we use an M/M/1 queueing simulation with as output either the mean or the 90% quantile of the transient-state waiting times, and as input the traffic rate. In this example, monotonic bootstrapped Kriging enables better sensitivity analysis than classic Kriging; i.e., bootstrapping gives lower MSE and confidence intervals with higher coverage and the same length. To illustrate convex Kriging, we start with simulation-optimization of an (s, S) inventory model, but we next switch to a Monte Carlo experiment with a second-order polynomial inspired by this inventory simulation. We could not find truly convex Kriging metamodels, either classic or bootstrapped; nevertheless, our bootstrapped “nearly convex” Kriging does give a confidence interval for the optimal input combination.