Are simulation standards in our future?

This panel seeks to initiate a discussion within the production system simulation community about a fundamental change in the way we think about, teach, and implement production system simulation. Today, production system simulation, while based on formal simulation languages, is largely an artistic process. We teach production system simulation as a studio course, i.e., students learn an esthetic for production system simulation, learn by example, and their progress is evaluated through studies in which they create simulations. We are not surprised, in fact fully expect that two simulationists will create possibly quite different simulations of the same production system, even using the same language.