ABSTRACT

Chapter 1 set out the foundations of conceptual modeling for simulation. It provided an understanding of current thinking on the topic and gave a definition of a conceptual model. It also discussed the requirements for a conceptual model: validity, credibility, utility, and feasibility (Chapter 1, Section 5). Such discussions are useful for informing a simulation modeling project, but they do not answer the question of how to develop a conceptual model. That is the question addressed in this chapter whose key contribution is to provide a framework for developing conceptual models for simulations of operations systems (Wild 2002). This is something that is largely missing from the current literature on simulation.