Tuesday at Wintersim

Tony Waller shares with us the highlights from the third day at WinterSim.

There was much to enjoy again today. The highlight for me was the 'titans of simulation' talk by Barry Nelson – lots of interesting issues raised – for example how far to go with fitting distributions to input data, and controversially (although not perhaps for commercial practitioners) whether to do so at all or just use the sample values or simple histogram based on these. Much common sense talked in the question section too, raising important issues of outlier data and dependence / correlation between successive values. Barry raised other points too but input data hit a nerve in the room, an indicative tremor of slight carelessness or maybe just interest in this area.

Practical approaches for simulation products to help with getting the best possible answers in the time available were also suggested – a theme that fits in with a key Lanner objective with WITNESS – speed to answer. Intelligent help with replications, run length to meet required confidence – all of great interest.

In the Business Process Modeling track, it was good to see solid simulation projects using some simple and some complicated business process definitions around an insurance business. Well-conceived simple models always delight, it is the backbone of simulation success. In these models the flexibility of staff was examined with the quantification of the expected efficiency gains.

Tonight a group of us took the “DC tour by twilight” – awe inspiring monuments, government and history. Below is a picture of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial lit up at night.