Industrial Systems Simulation

Course Description

Industrial Systems Simulation teaches how to model a system you cannot experiment on. The statewide description covers simulation methodology and languages, the design and analysis of simulation experiments, and applications to industrial and service system problems.

That last phrase is the reason the course matters: you rarely get to rearrange a live factory, hospital or airport to see what happens. A simulation model is how a proposal gets tested before anyone spends money, and building one credibly is among the most marketable things an industrial engineering graduate can do.

Carried by five Florida public institutions — FAMU, Florida State, UCF, UF and USF — at 3 credits, with FIU carrying the subject as ESI3523.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Formulate a discrete-event simulation model of an industrial or service system.
• Select and fit input probability distributions from observed data.
• Implement a model in a simulation package and verify and validate it.
• Design simulation experiments: run length, warm-up, replications, variance reduction.
• Analyse output statistically, with confidence intervals rather than single runs.
• Compare alternative system configurations and make a defensible recommendation.

Optional Outcomes

• Optimisation via simulation.
• Agent-based or continuous simulation alongside discrete-event.
• Animation and visualisation for presenting results to non-technical decision-makers.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Systems, models and the discrete-event world view.
• Random number and random variate generation.
• Input modelling: distribution fitting and goodness of fit.
• Model building in a simulation package.
• Verification and validation.
• Output analysis: terminating versus steady-state, replication, confidence intervals.
• Comparing alternative designs.

Optional Topics

• Variance reduction techniques.
• Simulation optimisation.
• Queueing theory as the analytical counterpart to simulation.
• Agent-based and hybrid models.

Resources & Tools

• Banks, Carson, Nelson & Nicol, Discrete-Event System Simulation, and Law, Simulation Modeling and Analysis, are the standard texts.
• ⚠⚠ Software varies and the catalogues are out of date about it. The statewide description and several institutional entries still name GPSS, a language first released in 1961. What Florida programmes actually teach is Arena, Simio, AnyLogic, FlexSim or Python’s SimPy. Ask before the term starts — some packages need a student licence and a machine that will run it.

Career Pathways

Named on the Industrial Engineer career path. Simulation skill is sought in manufacturing and logistics, and in Florida particularly in theme-park and attraction operations (queueing and throughput at very large scale), port and cruise logistics, distribution along the I-4 corridor, and hospital patient-flow work. It is also a common route into operations research and analytics roles.

Special Information

⚠⚠ This prefix splits the same subject across two levels

ESI numbers several subjects at both 3000 and 4000 level, and which one you see depends entirely on where you study:

⚠⚠ The level difference is not a difference in content, but it is a real transfer problem. A 2000-level course cannot supply upper-division hours toward a Florida baccalaureate; a 3000-level one can, so both forms here are safe on that count. What is not safe is assuming the numbers match: an evaluator matching on the identifier will see a mismatch where there is none. Send the syllabus, not the number.

⚠ The dated tooling is a tell worth reading

When a course description names a specific product, check whether the product is current. Here both the statewide record and institutional catalogues carry GPSS forward, which tells you the description has not been revised — not that the teaching has not. Judge the course by the syllabus issued in week one, not by the catalogue. The simulation method is stable and transfers; only the package changes.

Where this sits in an accredited programme

ABET-accredited industrial engineering programmes are required to cover the design, improvement and installation of integrated systems of people, materials, information, equipment and energy, drawing on the mathematical, physical and social sciences. This course is part of how a programme meets that requirement, which is why its content is fairly consistent even where the number is not.

⚠ For Professional Engineer licensure in Florida, what matters is that the degree is accredited under ABET’s Engineering commission: s. 471.013(1)(a), Florida Statutes, requires four years of experience for an engineering curriculum and six for an engineering technology curriculum.