KE tool: An open source software for automated input data in Discrete Event Simulation projects

Input data management is a time-consuming and costly for Discrete Event Simulation (DES) projects. According to research studies, the input data phase constitutes, on the average, can account for over a third of the time of an entire simulation project. This paper presents a newly developed Open Source (OS) tool, called the Knowledge Extraction (KE) tool that automates the input data management in DES projects enabling real-time simulation. The OS software reads data from several resources of an organisation; analyses it using statistical analysis and outputs it in a format that is applicable to be used by simulation software, all conducted in one automated process. We explain how the KE tool is developed using Python libraries, introduce its structure and provide insights of its employment.