Identification of the main methods used in simulation projects

Discrete event simulation is a tool to support decision-making that has been increasingly used to study complex systems. Several simulation research methods are found in the literature, each one has its own characteristics, to guide analysts during the development of simulation projects. In view of this, the current work identified the main research methods used in simulation projects. For this, a literature review was carried out on some of the major discrete event simulation books and papers from the proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, which is considered the main international conference on simulation. From the analysis performed in this study, it was possible to identify the most comprehensive methods, as well as the simplest ones. The common activities among them were presented and those that are important to conduct a simulation project were also discussed.