Arena

Kommentare: Perfect for both students learning Monte Carlo discrete-event simulation or for those in industry practicing the technique on behalf of their business.

Vorteile: Arena provides everything needed to simulate a process in any domain. It is very intuitive for systems engineers or those with a sophisticated level of business process modeling experience but could even be learned by those without formal training, with some patience. The possibilities are limitless.

Nachteile: Animation is not the software's strong point and was improved upon in the subsequent product, Simio. Perfectionists will have a nightmare of a time making their lines from one block to another straight--fix one, and you've inevitably caused a staggered line somewhere else. The automatic tools for organizing the UI sometimes miss the mark and caused many crossed lines. Fortunately all of these are UI level complaints--the process modeling engine is great!

Kommentare: I have used it in my professional field, simulating the entrances and exits of ships in port terminals, and from the academic point of view as a teacher, making simulations of manufacturing processes and inventory management.
This wide range of uses is only allowed by software with the flexibility that Arena has.

Vorteile: What most strikes me is that it combines all the facilities of a high-level program, with the flexibility of a general programming language, which is achieved through the interchangeable templates it has, which in turn have modules for the modeling and analysis of graphic simulation.
This flexibility at the time of modeling is associated with the completely hierarchical structure that Arena has.

Nachteile: As with any mathematical model: it is a powerful tool that in good hands can be very useful, but in the wrong hands can be very dangerous. This software allows through sensitivity analyzes that simulate, make decisions, which are based only on the simulated scenarios, can be very risky, if the model that has been raised has not been validated with real data and statistics.

Kommentare: Amazing! I utilized this software for 6+ month for university coursework. It is intuitive to learn and has a long list of capabilities.

Vorteile: I used this software as a tool in upper level university coursework. We utilized many tools from input analyzer to modeling complex stochastic systems. We collected real world data and created models of systems; it was a concrete way to symbolize systems of interest for experimentation. As an engineer, it was fascinating to work with and it is a tool that can be utilized in a wide variety of applications. Definitely recommend.

Nachteile: Very communicative despite not being "pretty". Takes a lot of customization and time to make graphics "pretty" and doesn't necessarily add to the function.

Vorteile: I love being able to animate the simulations that I create in Arena. Running the numbers is one thing, but being able to present the results in animated form the business stake holders is even better. It really helps get the non-technical folks on board with the simulation and helps them understand the results. Animation in Arena is easy and I never want to create another simulation without animation.

Nachteile: Sometimes it is hard to find answers to questions you have about Arena. The documentation that comes with the software is helpful, but it is limited. I have not been able to find a great website online for Arena support. For more popular software there is tons of help to be found online, but I guess Arena doesn't have a large enough user-base to have an active support community.

Kommentare: The software is capable of building a computer simulation model that mimics a complex and dynamic system such as healthcare system, which helps provide analytical recommendations and solutions for decision makers. The software helps my students to get their projects done with analytical results.

Vorteile: The software is easy to use and easy to make logic models for care delivery processes and patient flows in hospital units such as emergency department, medical/surgical unit.

Nachteile: The software's input analyzer needs improvement over the fitness test of distributions from the data points.