Business Process Modeling and Simulation

Been re-visiting a book I used long ago.   I only have the first edition, but its still useful as an overview of the methods.    Also a good intro to simulation.   Not enough about topics like RPA to actually use the modeling results.  Have not used later versions of ExtendSim.  Too expensive in the second edition, but what else is new on textbooks.

Business Process Modeling, Simulation and Design 2nd Edition
by Manuel Laguna  (Author), Johan Marklund 

Most textbooks on business process management focus on either the nuts and bolts of computer simulation or the managerial aspects of business processes. Covering both technical and managerial aspects of business process management, Business Process Modeling, Simulation and Design, Second Edition presents the tools to design effective business processes and the management techniques to operate them efficiently.

New to the Second Edition

Three completely revised chapters that incorporate ExtendSim 8
An introduction to simulation

A chapter on business process analytics

Developed from the authors’ many years of teaching process design and simulation courses, the text provides students with a thorough understanding of numerous analytical tools that can be used to model, analyze, design, manage, and improve business processes. It covers a wide range of approaches, including discrete event simulation, graphical flowcharting tools, deterministic models for cycle time analysis and capacity decisions, analytical queuing methods, and data mining. Unlike other operations management books, this one emphasizes user-friendly simulation software as well as business processes, rather than only manufacturing processes or general operations management problems.

Taking an analytical modeling approach to process design, this book illustrates the power of simulation modeling as a vehicle for analyzing and designing business processes. It teaches how to apply process simulation and discusses the managerial implications of redesigning processes. The ExtendSim software is available online and ancillaries are available for instructors. ... "

Simulation Tools

Just reexamined the simulation tools that exist today.     Would like to also see more as it applies to process optimization and higher level event based systems.   Found this,  Finite element examples mainly here:

Co-Design Center Develops Next-Gen Simulation Tools      By HPCwire 

The Exascale Computing Project's (ECP) Center for Efficient Exascale Discretizations (CEED) collaborates with application scientists, vendors, and software technology developers to create highly optimized discretization libraries and next-generation mini applications based on advanced high-order finite element methods.

These methods are providing simulation quality without increasing computational time.... " 

NASA Speeding up Fortran

NASA wants to reinvent, or at least make faster, the programming language Fortran. For purposes of speeding legacy air flow simulation software they have.  Surprising to some, there is still lots of valuable work that still exists in legacy languages.  This challenge is in the form of a competition.  From the BBC: 

Areas of AI to Watch

Very good piece by Nathan Benaich,  Covers at the right Tech savvy management-introductory level a number of AI oriented techniques.  I like these because each is more problem than technology facing.  Also brings in practical decision approaches we used in operations research.   Sections on each of these, have used a number of these, though sometimes under different names.   Note the less data article, critical.

Reinforcement Learning  
Generative Models
Networks with Memory
Learning from Less Data  and Building Small models  (Transfer Learning) 
Hardware for Training and Inference
Simulation Environments

Mentions of many companies and researchers involved in each area,  largely non-technical descriptions of each area.   Good read for all with strong interest in this area.

Nathan has " ...  an analytical digest of artificial intelligence and machine learning news from the technology industry, research lab and venture capital market  ...  ".     Link to it in the article,  I have subscribed.

Layering Realities for Better Simulation

 Am a long time practitioner of industrial simulation for problem solving, so this intrigued me.   Can we more effectively use VR to model worlds that represent our own?   And can that can be used to test design alternatives?  Does this only work in spaces that drirectly map to our own, like 3D flight simulation?. When the worlds are more abstract, the case is not so clear.  See below for video demo.

Layered Realities:
Oculus Quill shows how 'Inception'-like layered realities appear in VR   By Adario Strange

Mention made of Nick Bostrom's  Simulation Theory paper.

User Friendly and Visual Simulation Language

In the MIT News,  Faster and friendlier ... and thus more easily testable and maintainable, is always of interest.  Note the direct link to the visualization of the model.   Technical here, but I look forward to an applicable system.

MIT News (08/10/16) Larry Hardesty

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Adobe, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Toronto, Texas A&M University, and the University of Texas have developed a programming language called Simit. Simit can accelerate computer simulations by a factor of 200 or reduce their required code by 90 percent, according to a paper the researchers presented last month at the ACM SIGGRAPH 2016 conference in Anaheim, CA. 

"The story of this paper is that the trade-off between concise code and good performance is false," says MIT graduate student Fredrik Kjolstad. "It's not necessary, at least for the problems that this applies to. But it applies to a large class of problems." Simit requires the programmer to describe the translation between the graphical description of a system and the matrix description, but following that the coder can use the language of linear algebra to program the simulation. 

During the simulation, Simit does not have to translate graphs into matrices and vice versa, instead converting instructions issued in the language of linear algebra into the language of graphs, keeping the runtime efficiency of hand-coded simulations. Kjolstad notes Simit-written programs can run on either conventional microprocessors or on graphics processing units with no underlying code revisions. 

New System Modeler Capabilities: Reliability

Wolfram's new SystemModeler version brings new capabilities, examining.  I like the mention of 'cyber-physical' systems.    Most anything these days can be considered a member of that set.  And has performance, reliability and operational considerations.

Champaign, IL--With today's release of SystemModeler 4.1, Wolframis unveiling the next iteration of features in an easy-to-use modeling and simulation environment for cyber-physical systems. ...

One highlight is the integration of Mathematica's complete suite for reliability analysis. Consumer electronics, satellite systems, and flight systems all have different reasons for valuing reliability. Reliability analysis can show where to concentrate engineering efforts to produce the most reliable products, estimate where failure will happen, and price warranties accordingly.

In all, SystemModeler 4.1 adds or improves over 24 applications, alongside many features. Highlights include:

* SystemModeler capabilities for exporting models extended to importing models
* Import from tools such as Simulink, Flowmaster, and IBM Rational Rhapsody enabled based on the FMI standard
* Import subsystems, e.g. control system models from other tools, and integrate them with your Modelica models ...

Industries that rely on Wolfram's SystemModeler include but are not limited to aerospace, automotive, pharmaceuticals, systems biology, and electrical engineering.  ....  "

Revenue Management with Negotiation

University of Cincinnati's research seminars organized by the  Operations, Business Analytics, and Information Systems (OBAIS) department at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business.   Please reply to uday.rao@uc.edu    

The OBAIS department invites you to attend the following research seminar:
Date & Time: Friday, March 29, 2013, 1 PM in Lindner Hall Room 108
Speaker: Dr. Annabelle Feng, Purdue University
Talk: Revenue Management with Negotiation

Synthetic Environments

Simulations are synthetic environments.   It has been a long time since I too a look at Purdue's Simulex Inc.  which creates macroeconomic and agent oriented environments and infrastructures for the military and Fortune 500 companies.  Their case studies section does a good job of explaining how this works.

Massively Complex Agent Environments

I am reposting this article from over a year ago to remind myself and readers of interesting work done in very large scale agent models. Here from Simulex, (Simulex link no longer works) which positions itself as developing Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation. Simulex originated via expertise at Purdue. Although I cannot provide many details, Simulex tailored its SEAS agent-based economic models, developed for DOD applications, to important regional demand and growth applications for us.

" ... we use our exclusive license to SEAS to provide the next generation of consulting services to our clients in government and the private sector. Instead of experimenting with real people, SEAS allows clients to interact with synthetic people and observe what is happening. Using agent-based modeling in a business war-gaming environment, SEAS seamlessly incorporates all aspects of managerial decision making to provide a complete and integrated view of economies, industries, and organizations ... ".

Some of their application case studies, (Simulex links no longer work) with strongly visual outputs. Worth a closer look for bottom-up economic and interaction system simulations. Note also the inclusion of gaming environments.

Simulation Software Survey

OR/MS Today has published its yearly Simulation software survey. Always surprised that people who want to create useful virtual analyses don't know about this analytical resource.