Over the years, simulation models have been successfully built to observe the behavior of systems. Despite advances in the field and its growth in popularity, when simulation is to be introduced to an organization, there are challenges to be met including acceptance by staff, availability of staff to describe the various operations, existence of useful data, and management expectations. Organizations are continuously collecting data, which may lead one to believe that developing stochastic models of an organization's activities should be easy. However, elicitation of useful information may end up being a major bottleneck because usually the information system collecting such data is not designed for stochastic modeling. Unrealistic management expectations may result in simulation modeling being thrown away when these expectations are not met. Success in introducing simulation modeling will depend heavily on how well these challenges are addressed and managed.

Queues at emergency rooms (ER) are prioritized based on the patient's sickness level. As a consequence, patients with low priority frequently have to wait excessively long. At Mercy Hospital, we began to study means by which such time would be reduced, without putting in jeopardy the life of critical patients. As an initial effort, we studied the flow of patients at the Emergency Department (ED) and decided to model it with and without a fast track lane. A simulation study revealed that indeed a fast track lane reduces by almost 25% the time in the system for patients with low priority without negatively affecting the times of patients with higher priority.

No abstract

No abstract

From 1997–2000, the National Science Foundation has funded a research program at Florida International University with the purpose of encouraging bright engineering undergraduates to pursue graduate degrees and careers in engineering. The program was initiated because of a realization that the first two years of the undergraduate curriculum is full of math-intensive courses that undergraduates find to be very difficult and often perceive them as irrelevant. As a result, many good students get disillusioned with engineering and transfer to other majors. Our hypothesis is that if they get involved in applied projects early in their academic programs and have a chance to participate in real engineering design, they will be motivated to complete their engineering degrees. The long term success of the REU program cannot be measured until the careers of these students are established. However, immediate results can be seen both quantitatively and anecdotally. At the completion of each academic year and summer session, participating students Fill out questionnaires about their experience in the program and their plans for the future. Their responses indicate a strong likelihood for retention in engineering. The students' actions also indicate success. Several of the students have pursued internships and other extra curricular activities in the subject areas of their projects, suggesting that they plan to pursue these areas further. Early participation in research projects clearly provides motivation for students.