How To Assess The Acceptability And Credibility Of Simulation Results

The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive life cycle of a simulation study and guide the simulations in conducting 10 processes, 10 phases, and 13 credibility assessment stages of the life cycle. The guidelines assist the simulation practitioners in: formulating the problem; investigating solution techniques and the system under study; formulating, representing, and programming the simulation model; designing experiments; experimenting; redefining the model; and presenting the simulation results. The guidelines also assist the practitioners in: formulated problem verification, feasibility assessment of simulation, system and objectives definition verification, model qualification, communicative model verification, programmed model verification, experiment design verification, data validation, model validation, and presentation verification. The practitioners can follow the guidelines presented herein and significantly increase their chance of being successful in conducting a simulation study.