Simulation and modelling has been widely accepted as one of the most important aspects of the Industrial engineering. The application and use of simulation models has grown exponentially since the 1950' until today. Over the years, the complexity of the simulated aspects has been adapted to the complexity of the analysed cases which has risen proportionally too. That is why techniques used many years ago, can often not give an adequate representation of the real world any more. For that reason, we propose to use hybrid simulation models, which are a combination of simulation paradigms in order to cope with this problem. In this paper, we will give an overview of selected researches and applications with an emphasis on Discrete Event Simulation and System Dynamics, as one of the core simulation based techniques in that area. Key words: Hybrids, Models, Simulation of models, System dynamics, Discrete-event simulation
INTRODUCTIONThe advances in Industrial Engineering (IE) have gone a long way since the early beginnings and the experiments of Taylor, Gilbreth, Babbage, Towne and others. Not so much in the area of the fi eld, but in the direction of tackling even the smallest details possible. In order to do this the complexity of the problems grew, with that the data needed to be obtained and processed was also getting bigger. The computers played huge factor in keeping the Industrial Engineering alive and constantly being in trend. Not only because of the hardware possibilities and the calculations that could have been made now, but also from the point of view that many software packages have been developed in order to solve some kind of an IE problem. There are solutions for fi nding an optimal layout, managing production processes, tackling ergonomic issues, calculating cost/profi t etc. (the intention is not to name vendors here).Simulation and modelling has been widely accepted as one of the most important aspects of the Industrial Engineering. The application and use of the simulation models has grown exponentially since the 50' until today. This is mainly because of the advances in the computation fi eld, but also because of the increased number (percentage) of acceptance by the academia and the industry (Robinson 2004a). The complexity of the simulated issues has been adapted to the complexity of the real world cases and has risen proportionally. Many of the tools and techniques used many years ago can not present the level of details that is needed today in some cases. One of the theses for future trends in the fi eld of simulation by Robinson (2004) is that in order to deal with this, a combination of techniques would be required. Also, in (Banks et al. 2003) few of the experts asked for bigger accent to be put in interoperability of simulation software. In that direction, the best from the selected techniques would be taken and they would complement each other, resulting in the synergy factor. In this paper, a comparison and combination of System Dynamics and Discrete Event Simulation (DES) will be pres...