Arena Newsletter and Blog

The Direct Read feature has been Arena for a few years now but the capability has been expanded to more Arena elements, making it easier to import data directly into Arena for ease of use in analyzing data.   For those of you who haven’t used the Direct Read functionality within Arena, it is definitely a feature worth taking a look at.  Direct Read allows you to link elements in Arena with data sources so that Arena will read in the values for those elements from the data source.  This means that you can create an Excel file and have data defined for your model in a workbook that you will link via Named Ranges to Recordsets in Arena.  

Arena is innovating simulation of high speed systems.  We’re solving bigger problems, faster, and more accurately to help our customers remain competitive in their fast paced business.

So you have completed your Arena simulation project. You slaved over input data and extracting the system description from the experts. You developed a detailed functional specification to guide you through the model development. You developed the Arena model in sections so you could easily verify it. You spent several hours with the system experts to validate the Arena model to make sure it had the correct fidelity. And you ran several scenarios to find the best of several alternatives to achieve the objective stated in your functional specification. Now you're finished and you feel really good!!

If you’ve attended my training class before, worked on a project with me, or even sat in on a sales call in which I provided engineering support, I’m sure you’ve heard me stress the importance of building a functional specification.  This functional specification will be the road map for the project.

In Discrete Event Simulation one issue we must resolve is the number of concurrent entities in the model. If that number gets “large” then model run speed can be impacted. In the typical systems that we model this usually does not become an issue either because we will not have a large concurrent number or because our computers are really fast. 

According to Wikipedia, skill-based routing (SBR) is a call-assignment strategy used in call centers to assign incoming calls to the most suitable agent, instead of simply choosing the next available agent. However, many types of systems have aspects where skill-based routing should be considered – retail, quick service restaurant, and even manufacturing and maintenance systems can utilize the technique. Skill-based routing occurs anytime an entity needs to be directed to a resource with the most applicable skill sets or capabilities. In this fashion, entities can be processed by resources that can provide better service or faster completion of the task.