ENHANCING BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT WITH SIMULATION OPTIMIZATION Jay

Less than a handful of business process software vendors offer optimization to supplement their simulation capability. However, the need for optimization of simulation models arises when the process analyst wants to find a set of model specifications (i.e., input parameters and/or structural assumptions) that leads to optimal performance. On one hand, the range of parameter values and the number of parameter combinations is too large for analysts to simulate all possible scenarios, so they need a way to guide the search for good solutions. On the other hand, without simulation, many real world problems are too complex to be modeled by mathematical formulations that are at the core of pure optimization methods. This creates a conundrum; pure optimization models alone are incapable of capturing all the complexities and dynamics of the system, so one must resort to simulation, which cannot easily find the best solutions. Simulation Optimization resolves this conundrum by combining both methods. ABSTRACT