5203881
Components of an Incident Management Simulation and Gaming Framework and Related Developments
The nation's emergency responders need to work in a coordinated, well-planned manner to best mitigate the impact of an emergency incident. They need to be trained and ready to act in view of the increased security threat. The training has been traditionally provided using live eXercises at great eXpense. Simulation and gaming systems could provide a wider range of training at a much lower cost. Integrated gaming and simulation systems should be used for training decision makers and responders on the same scenarios, preparing them to work together as a team. A large number of simulation and gaming tools are needed to address the huge number of scenarios that can be of interest for incident management. An efficient approach will be to develop a library of interoperable component models that can be assembled together in different combinations to represent a range of scenarios. Standard specifications of the component models are needed to stimulate the development. The specifications should allow for alternate competing implementations. This paper presents a conceptual architecture that partitions the incident management simulation and gaming solution space into standard components. Recent literature is surveyed to identify related models and/or simulators where available for each defined component. The suggested components and the survey lay some preliminary groundwork in developing a holistic model of the incident response domain.
6477912
Stress testing a supply chain using simulation
Simulation provides the capability to evaluate performance of a system operating under current or proposed configurations, policies and procedures. It is very applicable to evaluation of strategic and operational level plans for supply chains. It is especially useful for exploring the viability of a supply chain before beginning production. This paper describes the use of simulation for determining the readiness of a supply chain designed by a small company for providing sub-systems to a defense contractor. The supply chain had to be stress tested at surge and mobilization volume levels to meet the requirements. Simulation provided the ideal methodology to identify and demonstrate the behavior of the supply chain under stress and evaluate strategies to meet the defined volumes. It was used to prove the readiness of the supply chain reducing perceived risks in using the virtual operation.
18971661
Development of a high-level supply chain simulation model
This paper describes an effort that involved development of a simulation model for evaluating the business processes and inventory control parameters of a logistics and distribution supply chain. A generic simulation tool, rather than a supply chain simulator, was developed for meeting customized needs of the effort. The paper describes, the approaches used to model at the selected level of abstraction, the development of interfaces for data and experimentation and the development and delivery of animation for communicating the approach and results to the client.
201885623
Manufacturing supply chain applications: modeling computer assembly operations for supply chain integration
Factory operations have been modeled for years to understand the relationship between the different design and policy factors and the performance measures of interest. The increasing awareness of the need to manage factories as a link in the supply chain places a corresponding requirement for an enhanced approach for factory modeling. This paper describes the modeling of a computer assembly factory for supply chain integration by including aspects of inbound and outbound logistics and relevant business processes. Lessons are drawn based on the experience.
18211780
Supply chain opportunities: panel session: opportunities for simulation in supply chain management
It has become a matter of survival that many companies improve their supply chain efficiency. This presents an opportunity for simulation. However, there are many challenges that must be overcome for simulation to be a contributor to play an effective role. Four contributors discuss the opportunities that they see for simulation to play a meaningful role in the area of supply chain management.
32884753
Expert Simulation For On-line Scheduling
In recent years, the automotive industry has realized the importance of speed of new products to market and has mounted efforts for improving it. The Expert System Scheduler (ESS) facilitates these efforts by enabling manufacturing plants to generate viable schedules under increasing constraints and demands for flexibility. The scheduler takes advantage of the Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) environment by utilizing the real-time information from the factory for responsive scheduling. The Expert System Scheduler uses heuristics developed by an experiences factory scheduler. It uses simulation concepts and these heuristics to generate schedules. Forward and "backward" simulation are used at different stages of the schedule generation process. The system is used to control parts flow on the factory floor at one automated facility. This highly automated facility is a testbed for implementation of CIM concepts. The scheduler runs on a Texas Instruments (TI) Explorer II computer using software developed inhouse utilizing IntelliCorp's Knowledge Engineering Environment (KEE) shell and the LISP language. The scheduling computer is networked to the factory control computer, which actually controls the plant floor. The TI Explorer II acquires current plant floor information from the factory control system, generates a new schedule and sends it back within a short time. The configuration allows fast response to changes in requirements and plant floor conditions.
6600546
Learning and Extending Sublanguages
A number of natural models for learning in the limit is introduced to deal with the situation when a learner is required to provide a grammar covering the input even if only a part of the target language is available. Examples of language families are exhibited that are learnable in one model and not learnable in another one. Some characterizations for learnability of algorithmically enumerable families of languages for the models in question are obtained. Since learnability of any part of the target language does not imply monotonicity of the learning process, we consider also our models under additional monotonicity constraint.
30237295
Crowd Control: Coordinating Processes in Parallel
Tutorials • Bridget Rosewell and Paul Ormerod " Agent Based Models and Social Simulation in the Policy Process " [Room: Aula Magna] This tutorial will focus on practical examples of agent based models which are actually being used as part of the decision making process of policy makers. The tutorial will also address key issues in integrating ABMs and social simulation into the policy making process. The tutorial will introduce the Multi-Agent Simulation Suite (MASS), a novel, integrated simulation environment for agent-based social simulation. MASS was designed with scientific modelers and not professional programmers in mind. Therefore, ease of use and prudent scientific practices were at the focus of the suite's design. The tutorial consists in a brief introductory part providing a generalized definition of the basic elements composing a simulation model. Then, it will be shown how LSD allows users to transparently adopt the theoretical definition, automatically generating all the technical code necessary for developing, running and analysing a simulation model. A series of examples will show the advantages of the definition proposed and the most relevant features of LSD. The tutorial will introduce the Multi-Agent Simulation Suite (MASS), a novel, integrated simulation environment for agent-based social simulation. MASS was designed with scientific modelers and not professional programmers in mind. Therefore, ease of use and prudent scientific practices were at the focus of the suite's design.
30649473
Joint Bidding in the Name-Your-Own-Price Channel: A Strategic Analysis
In this paper, we study the name-your-own-price (NYOP) channel. We examine theoretically and empirically whether asking consumers to place a joint bid for multiple items, rather than bid one item at a time as practiced today, can increase NYOP retailers' profits. Relatedly, we also examine whether allowing consumers to self-select whether to place a joint bid or itemwise bids increases retailers' profits and consumers' surplus. We construct a dynamic model that incorporates both demand uncertainty and supply uncertainty to address these issues. Our theoretical analysis identifies the conditions under which joint bidding can increase both NYOP retailers' profits and consumers' surplus. We find that some consumers might bid more for the very same items when they place joint bids. The increase in bid amount is related to the fact that joint bidding reduces the chance of mismatch between NYOP retailers' costs and consumer bids. We conducted a laboratory study to assess the descriptive validity of some of the model predictions, because there are no field data on joint bidding in the NYOP channel. The results of the study are directionally consistent with our theory.
5851955
Vacillatory Learning of Nearly Minimal Size Grammars
In Gold's influential language learning paradigm a learning machine converges in the limit to one correct grammar. In an attempt to generalize Gold's paradigm, Case considered the question whether people might converge to vacillating between up to (some integer) n > 1 distinct, but equivalent, correct grammars. He showed that larger classes of languages can be algorithmically learned (in the limit) by converging to up to n + 1 rather than up to n correct grammars. He also argued that, for ''small'' n>1, it is plausible that people might sometimes converge to vacillating between up to n grammars. The insistence on small n was motivated by the consideration that, for ''large'' n, at least one of n grammars would be too large to fit in people's heads. Of course, even for Gold's n = 1 case, the single grammar converged to in the limit may be infeasibly large. An interesting complexity restriction to make, then, on the final grammar(s) converged to in the limit is that they all have small size. In this paper we study some of the trade-offs in learning power involved in making a well-defined version of this restriction. We show and exploit as a tool the desirable property that the learning power under our size-restricted criteria (for successful learning) is independent of the underlying acceptable programming systems. We characterize the power of our size-restricted criteria and use this characterization to prove that some classes of languages, which can be learned by converging in the limit to up to n + 1 nearly minimal size correct grammars, cannot be learned by converging to up to n unrestricted grammars even if these latter grammars are allowed to have a finite number of anomalies (i.e., mistakes) per grammar. We also show that there is no loss of learning power in demanding that the final grammars be nearly minimal size iff one is willing to tolerate an unbounded, finite number of anomalies in the final grammars and there is a constant bound on the number of different grammars converged to in the limit. Hence, if we allow an unbounded, finite number of anomalies in the final grammars and the number of different grammars converged to in the limit is unbounded but finite (or if there is a constant bound on the number of anomalies allowed in the final grammars), then there is a loss of learning power in requiring that the final grammars be nearly minimal size. These results do not always match what might be expected from the cases, previously examined by Freivalds, Kinber, and Chen, of learning nearly minimal size programs for functions.
67075
Strong separation of learning classes
Abstract Suppose LC 1 and LC 2 are two machine learning classes each based on a criterion of success. Suppose, for every machine which learns a class of functions according to the LC 2 criterion of success, there is a machine which learns this class according to the LC 2 criterion. In the case where the converse does not hold LC, is said to be separated from LC 2. It is shown that for many such separated learning classes from the literature a much stronger separation holds: (∀𝒞∈LC 1) (∃𝒞' ∈LC 2 - LC 1(( [' ⊃𝒞] It is also shown that there is a pair of separated learning classes from the literature for which the stronger separation above does not hold. A philosophical heuristic toward the design of artificially intelligent learning programs is presented with each strong separation result.