Description by Publisher
Life is unpredictable, an excellent plan for given circumstances can be terribly wrong for a different possible realization of future events. Still, one must make decisions now, without knowing the future. Simulation is an accepted means to support smart decisions in face of uncertainty.
Simulation has been successfully used resolving such questions as: what is the best method to shortening lines or queues in banks/supermarkets/theme parks/etc, how to streamline manufacturing goods/delivering services, how to route telephone traffic/police cars,/taxi cabs/trucks/messages on a network/jobs on factory floor and problems in numerous other fields. The aim of simulation is to reveal flaws or allow experimentation in the design of the system which can be tested �on paper� before investing in the creation of an actual system, saving effort and cost.
Simulation is simple in principle: it imitates reality such as work in a bank, in a port, in a warehouse etc in a computer program. Unfortunately, the construction of such a program has been so far a complicated process well beyond the ability of laymen.
Therefore simulation has long been a tool of the exclusive group of experts, but not any more!
SimWiz brings the simulation to the laymen, no programming or other specialized skill is needed in contrast with virtually all other simulation products. All other software are either easy to use because they are specialized for a narrow niche of application or are general enough but their use requires long training. In spite of being straightforward to use, SimWiz does all for each purpose: it defines, validates, communicates and runs simulation models. Its accompanying tutorial is sufficient to guide the novice in numerous representative applications of simulation: traffic, call centers, factory floor, maintenance, inventory, hospital.
Thus, SimWiz is not just another simulation program or modeling language. Rather it is a totally new approach to help the user in various steps of a simulation project (US patent pending). The simplicity is a result of special features that cannot be found in any other simulation software:
* The user does not have to be familiar with simulation elements to build a fairly complex model. Constructing a simulation model in SimWiz is performed in a few steps when at each step new information is added until the model is ready. The information collecting starts with the basic facts at the beginning and turns to the details towards the end (from top to down design) and each step is supported by earlier steps. Anybody familiar with the simulated system can supply the information, therefore can construct the model.
* The model is stated in a human-readable format that can be understood by non-simulationists. So all the experts of the system can review it and contribute to its validity.
* The model can be communicated easily and the recipient does not need any specialized software to read it.
* Variance reduction techniques aiming at increasing the accuracy of results are performed with a single click instead of tedious and error-prone manipulations of random streams in appropriate places in the model.
* The model can be encoded so that it is very hard to recover from it any trade secret and can be therefore more safely communicated via unsecured channels.
* Animation that concentrates on validity rather than frills and simplified tracing provide easy way to model validation.
The model can be run in the inbuilt simulator or can be translated to an Arena model. It offers to build a model in record time, without errors even by one who is not at home in simulation.
