This book provides a basic treatment of discrete-event simulation, including the proper collection and analysis of data, the use of analytic techniques, verification and validation of models, and designing simulation experiments. Contains up-to-date treatment of simulation of manufacturing and material handling systems. Includes numerous solved examples. Offers an integrated website. Explains how to interpret simulation software output. For those interested in learning more about discrete-event simulation.
Barry L. Nelson is the James N. and Margie M. Krebs Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University and is director of the Master of Engineering Management Program there. His research centers on the design and analysis of computer-simulation experiments on models of stochastic systems, concentrating on multivariate input modeling and output analysis and on optimization via simulation. He has published numerous papers and two books. He has served as the simulation area editor of Operations Research and as president of the INFORMS (then TIMS) College on Simulation, and he has held many positions for the annual Winter Simulation Conference, including program chair in 1997 and board member currently.
I've been using this as reference for a CS class on simulation, and it has been a __life_saver__. Some authors just assault you with equations, then wave their hands in the air as an explanation. But here, everything is in plain English. And while the material's not easy, it can be grasped after some close reading. Very trite, but it's made the subject fun. PLUS: Solutions for the exercises are available online with some clever Googling. Check it.
I read this book for self-study to get an idea as to how discrete event simulation worked. This book was pretty good for that. The application chapters at the end of the text weren't terribly useful as it seems like they exist to motivate a lab section or assignments in a university course. Some of the statistics-oriented sections did full calculation demos in the text. While a good idea in principle, these also dragged on quite a bit. Still it was a good, complete text for getting a handle on these concepts.
This is a fairly good book on the subject of experimental modeling and simulation. It does help go have a background in stats and there is some calculus in the book, not to mention a strong understanding of programming.