Towards a Component Based Conceptual Modeling Language for Discrete Event Simulation

Recent studies state the importance of conceptual modeling in simulation life cycles. Proper development of a conceptual model is critical for expressing the context, elements, relationships, limitations and purpose of the simulation study. Surprisingly there are many simulation projects that have no explicit conceptual model, a poorly or only partially developed conceptual model, or incomplete documentation of the simulation conceptual model. The reason for the deficiency in conceptual modeling stage is that there does not exist a well defined simulation conceptual modeling method. In this paper, a brief overview of the conceptual modeling techniques used in simulation field is provided and the need for a unified simulation conceptual modeling method is stated. Then, a conceptual modeling approach for discrete event simulation is proposed and compared to other modeling techniques.