Using the Introductory Simulation Course to Teach Process Dynamics and Extended Operations Management Concepts

The introductory simulation course is typically structured around a series of exercises designed to successively expand the students' repertoire of modeling and analysis skills. This paper describes an introductory simulation course in which the student exercises, while still providing an introduction to simulation modeling and analysis, are designed and sequenced to develop understanding and intuition regarding the behavior of stochastic dynamic systems. These exercises present an opportunity to extend a number of simpler analyses typically presented in the introductory operations management course