A tutorial on ABCmod: An Activity Based discrete event Conceptual modelling framework

The notion of a conceptual model is present in any discussion about the modelling and simulation process within the discrete event dynamic system domain (Robinson 2011). This paper presents an overview on an activity-based conceptual modelling framework: Activity Based Conceptual modelling = ABCmod (Birta and Arbez 2013). It transforms the general notion of a conceptual model to into a specific conceptual modelling artefact. The ABCmod framework encompasses the naturalness of the activity perspective which has considerable intuitive appeal (Pidd 2004a and 2004b). ABCmod accommodates both the structural and the behavioral aspects that are fundamental components of any conceptual model and provides a collection of constructs both for handling input/output and for dealing with special circumstances such as pre-emption, interruption and balking. We provide an overview of the framework and illustrate many of its features in examples.