Operations Management: Sustainability and Supply Chain Management, Twelfth Edition

Advantages and Disadvantages of Simulation

Simulation is a tool that has become widely accepted by managers for several reasons. The main advantages of simulation are as follows:

Student Tip

There are many reasons it’s better to simulate a real-world system than to experiment with it.

1. It can be used to analyze large and complex real-world situations that cannot be solved by conventional operations management models.

2. Real-world complications can be included that most OM models cannot permit. For example, simulation can use any probability distribution the user defines; it does not require standard distributions.

3. “Time compression” is possible. ...