Operational Analysis

My second project using simulation I did when I worked in the Directorate of Logistics Analysis in the Centre for Operational Research and Analysis.  In this project, I looked at the editorial process for scientific reports using a technique developed by Peter Denning and Jeffrey Buzen called Operational Analysis of Queueing Network Models.  This was a data driven methodology that did not require the assumptions of exponential arrival and service times.  The primary tool it used was Little’s Law.  In the model that I developed, reports would enter the editorial process then pass through a network of queues before they exit the system as a finished product.  I collected data on the arrivals over a period of time, the service times at each editorial process and the routing of the reports through the system including return visits to the same process.  The model worked with overall averages of the data that I collected.  So it was like a fluid flow approximation.