Abstract:While eco-balances and material flow networks have become common parts of Environmental Management Information Systems (EMIS) to analyse the material flows within a company, discrete event simulation has not yet been used widely in this domain. This paper argues for combining discrete event simulation with material flow analysis in order to analyse both the environmental and economic impact of business decisions.After a brief overview of core characteristics and benefits of discrete event simulation and material flow analysis based on so-called Material Flow Networks, a plug-in-based architecture for generating a customised material flow simulator is presented. The benefits of this framework's component-based structure are then discussed in the context of its practical application to the lithography stage in the manufacture of semiconductors. A summary of the framework's most significant aspects and areas of application conclude the paper.

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Financial markets are highly complex adaptive systems. This paper deals with the application of simulators in software architectures for back-testing and automating financial market trading strategies. It characterizes traits and problems of algorithmic trading and describes the established use of simulators in back-testing and automated trading. A new approach in the form of a hierarchical software architecture is introduced, containing simulators as integral parts in all layers, using them both during back-testing and automated trading. In addition to the software architecture the opening objects of investigation are outlined. Finally, the potential of generalizing the application domains of our approach beyond financial market trading strategies is pointed out.