Stella is the primary simulation language used in the course. Class time is used to assist students in carrying out various labs to reinforce the primary concepts. Some students may find that they can take the course almost entirely remotely. The results are used compute statistical measures of performance for the system under study. DSS is used extensively in the fields of operations research, civil engineering, industrial engineering, systems analysis, etc.
Students learn how to use DSS to study problems in their respective fields of interest.
Discrete system models characterize the system as a flow of entities that enter and move through various processes, queues, and decision logic according to various probability functions specified by the modeler. Monte Carlo sampling is used to calculate statistical measures of system performance, such as throughput, average queue length, resource utilization, etc. The course focuses on using the ProModel discrete event simulation software to model manufacturing systems. This special topics course will examine the concepts, techniques and tools for managing risk and making decision as key components of the systems engineering process. In this course, risk connotes a measure of the probability and severity of an undesired event.