Development of a process modelling tool for simulation

An important phase in any simulation project is the pre-coding phase. This phase involves such tasks as problem definition, project planning, system definition, conceptual model formulation, preliminary experiment design and input data preparation. Process modelling tools are available to support this phase. This paper reports on research that reviewed current process model methods available to support simulation modelling. A conclusion from this review is that none of the tools available adequately support the requirements-gathering phase of simulation. This is not surprising as none of the process modelling tools were developed for explicit support of simulation. In an attempt to overcome this perceived deficiency, research was carried out into developing a process modelling technique that could more adequately support discrete event simulation. This paper reports on the current work-in-progress of this research. The currently developed process modelling method is illustrated using a case study and is compared to IDEF3.