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The Winter Simulation Conference:
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Joe Hugan |
Enver Yücesan |
Douglas M. Morrice |
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here for a pdf file of this article.
The Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) is the premier international forum for disseminating recent advances in the field of system simulation, with the principal focus being discrete-event simulation and combined discrete-continuous simulation. In addition to a technical program of unsurpassed scope and quality, WSC provides the central meeting place for simulation practitioners, researchers, and vendors working in all disciplines and in the industrial, governmental, military, and academic sectors.
From another perspective, the Winter Simulation
Conference is the result of a remarkable collaborative effort that has
been led entirely by volunteers for four decades and that is based on
a unique, longstanding cooperative arrangement among seven major professional
organizations. In this article we discuss all these aspects of WSC, giving
special emphasis to the highlights of WSC '10, which will be held December
5 - 8, 2010 in
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The Winter Simulation Conference features tracks devoted to leading-edge developments in simulation modeling and analysis methodology together with a diversity of simulation application areas including: agent-based modeling; business process reengineering; computer and communication systems; construction engineering and project management; education; healthcare; homeland security; logistics, transportation and distribution; manufacturing; military operations; risk analysis; virtual reality; web-enabled simulation; and the future of simulation. Moreover, WSC offers an invaluable educational opportunity for novices and experts alike, with a large segment of each program devoted to introductory and advanced tutorials that are carefully designed to address the needs of simulation professionals at all levels of expertise and that are presented by prominent individuals in the field. Of particular interest to virtually all attendees are the software tutorials and the exhibits by software and hardware vendors, which cover a broad range of commercial simulation products and services. Provided to each registrant at the beginning of the conference, the Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference contains complete documentation of the full technical papers presented during the conference. Rounding out the attractions of WSC are several social gatherings as well as meetings of numerous professional societies and users' groups. All these events give attendees the opportunity to get acquainted and to become involved in the ongoing activities of the international simulation community.
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In recent years the WSC program has been organized into broad subject-area categories (or tracks) that reflect the current state of the simulation field as well as the mix of interests and professional orientations of conference attendees. Although the content and structure of these tracks will vary to some extent from year to year, generally each WSC contains tracks organized along the following lines:
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From its inception, WSC has been distinguished by its broad base of interest and sponsorship. Currently, the following professional organizations are full financial sponsors for WSC, providing working capital for each year's conference, and sharing equally in conference surpluses or losses: Association for Computing Machinery/Special Interest Group on Simulation (ACM/SIGSIM); Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences Simulation Society (INFORMS-SIM); Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE); and The Society for Modeling and Simulation International (SCS). The conference also has three technical sponsors: American Statistical Association (ASA); Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers/Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (IEEE/SMCS); and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Each of the WSC sponsor organizations appoints a representative to serve on the WSC Board of Directors.
The WSC Board of Directors is responsible for long-term administration and policy making for the conference. The board's primary goal is to maintain a high-quality program with low registration fees while keeping WSC on a sound financial footing into the foreseeable future. Generally each board member serves for eight years, giving WSC stability and continuity. The board meets twice annually, in June and in conjunction with WSC in December. Minutes from the WSC board meetings are available from the WSC web site <http://www.wintersim.org/minutes.htm>.
Several years in advance of a particular conference, the board selects the leaders of the conference committee for that WSC, including the general chair, the program chair, and the business chair. Each conference committee consists entirely of volunteers drawn from the sponsoring organizations. The program chair forms an all-volunteer program committee that includes the proceedings coeditors, and the track coordinators. Within each track of the program described above, the assigned track coordinator is responsible for organizing a coherent set of sessions covering selected topics of current interest. Each track coordinator also recruits session chairs and arranges for referees to review the papers that are submitted (or invited) for inclusion in the corresponding track. Recently the acceptance rate for contributed papers has been about seventy-five percent, and the final program for each WSC has consisted of roughly equal numbers of invited and contributed papers.
Because several hundred libraries worldwide obtain the Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference online through the ACM Digital Library <http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm> or the IEEE Xplore Digital Library <www.ieee.org/products/onlinepubs/pub/about_xplore.html>, the WSC Proceedings is well established as the primary archival outlet for rapid dissemination of leading-edge developments in system simulation. The proceedings coeditors perform all duties required for timely publication of the Proceedings. In 1997 a compact disk (CD) version of the WSC Proceedings was published in addition to the hard-copy (paper) version; and since 2000 the complete text of each full technical article in the latest WSC Proceedings has also been made freely accessible online via the INFORMS-SIM Web site <www.informs-sim.org> shortly after the close of each conference. Growing acceptance of electronic media for archival purposes meant that, beginning in 2005, hard-copy distribution of the Proceedings to conference attendees was discontinued; instead each attendee is now provided with a CD of the complete Proceedings. The extraordinarily high quality of the WSC Proceedings is a direct result of the intensive, closely coordinated efforts of the proceedings coeditors, the proceedings publisher, the program chair, the track coordinators, the referees, and the WSC webmaster as well as the authors.
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WSC 2010 will be held in vibrant
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Dr. Simon
Bradley, Vice President, Engineering, Physics, IT Security Services
and Simulation, EADS Innovation Works. As the head of a technical research division,
Dr. Bradley focuses on Security, Information Technology, Systems/Software
Engineering, Multi-Physics modeling and the use of Simulation. His team
consists of 150 people, based in 6 countries – ranging from PhD students
through to world renowned experts in their respective fields, working
closely with organizations around the world to look at using simulation
and technology innovations to help governments, regional organizations,
and aid agencies to cope with the effects of geological and environmental
change. He is currently responsible for reviewing the long-term research
work required for EADS to continue its growth in the Homeland Security
market, which is being done through expansion into the
PROGRAM: WSC 2010 features a comprehensive program ranging from introductory tutorials to state-of-the-art research and practice. For the third consecutive year, WSC will incorporate the MASM (Modeling and Analysis for Semiconductor Manufacturing) Conference, the leading modeling and analysis conference specific to global semiconductor manufacturing and supply chain operations.
The theme of the WSC 2010
will be Global Integration and Collaboration.
Our featured speakers will focus on the key role played by simulation
in defining strategies as well as in assessing and managing risks in global
projects requiring integration and collaboration. Our keynote speaker is Dr. Simon Bradley, Vice President of Engineering, Physics,
IT Security Services and Simulation at EADS Innovation Works. As the parent company of
Airbus, EADS lives this challenge on a daily basis in all aspects of their
activities. Dr. Bradley will take
us through this exciting journey.
In addition, as one of our Titans, Dr. Phil Heidelberger
of
For additional information, sponsorship opportunities, or to volunteer, contact the WSC'10 General Chair, Joe Hugan (email:jhugan@gmail.com), or the WSC'10 Program Chair, Enver Yücesan, INSEAD (email:enver.yucesan@insead.edu).
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WSC 2011 will be held on 11-14 December at
Grand Arizona Resort in
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Although in some sense the origins of the Winter Simulation
Conference can be traced to certain computing seminars held in the late
1940s, the impetus to hold a national conference on the scale of the current
WSC took shape in the spring of 1967. The Conference on Applications of
Simulation Using the General Purpose Simulation System (GPSS) was held
November 13-14, 1967, at the Hilton Hotel in
Because of the technical and financial success
of the 1967 conference, a second conference was held December 2-4, 1968,
at the Hotel Roosevelt in
Much of the structure and traditions of what
is now known as the Winter Simulation Conference crystallized during the
period 1969-1974. The Third Conference on Applications of Simulation was
held December 8-10, 1969, at the International Hotel in
It should also be noted that WSC shares a
common heritage with the Summer Computer Simulation Conference (SCSC),
which has traditionally concentrated on continuous system simulation.
Timed to minimize competition with the 1969 predecessor of WSC, the Conference
on Applications of Continuous System Simulation Languages was held June
30-July 1, 1969, at the Sheraton Palace Hotel in
By 1975 the ad hoc nature of WSC's administration
had completely broken down, and the conference with
multiple sponsorship planned for that year did not take place.
The rebirth of WSC in 1976 was largely due to the initiative of Robert
G. Sargent and the work of Paul F. Roth,
Throughout the 1980s, WSC grew and evolved to address the constantly changing interests of the simulation community. Since 1984 each WSC has featured an exhibit area in which vendors may demonstrate their software products to interested attendees. Instead of the traditional two-volume, softbound format for the WSC Proceedings, beginning in 1984 the Proceedings was published in a one-volume, hardbound format. In 1985 the American Statistical Association became a WSC sponsor. In 1986 the program was substantially expanded with the addition of two tracks devoted to software tutorials as well as a track devoted to manufacturing simulation. TIMS/College on Simulation (now INFORMS-SIM) began sponsoring the Ph.D.-student colloquium in 1988.
Since the early 1990s, the pace of innovation and change in WSC has accelerated substantially. To provide a timely forum for rapidly developing areas in the simulation field, recent conference committees have added the following new tracks and minitracks to the program:
Many of these new tracks and minitracks have attracted a sufficiently large constituency to become a permanent part of the WSC program.
Beyond the expansion of the WSC program in recent years, other innovations have improved both the scope and quality of virtually every aspect of the conference. Since 1990 the review process for contributed papers has been strengthened and formalized, with written referees' reports being provided to the author(s) for every contributed paper. The poster session was introduced in 1993. The conference Web site <www.wintersim.org> made its debut in 1995; and the Web site has rapidly become the primary vehicle for dissemination of information about the conference - including electronic versions of the Call for Papers, the Author Kit, and the Preliminary Program as well as an online registration facility. Although the WSC Proceedings was published in both hard-copy and CD versions beginning in 1997, the increased size of the hard-copy Proceedings forced a return to a two-volume, softbound format beginning in 1998, and the hard-copy Proceedings was discontinued in 2005. Traditionally the WSC Final Program simply provided the locations and times of all technical presentations and other events of interest to attendees. In 1999, however, the content of the Final Program was substantially expanded to include abstracts not only of all Proceedings papers but also of all presentations in the Ph.D.-Student Colloquium and all posters in the Poster Session; and this was achieved without sacrificing the convenience of the Final Program as a pocket-size guide to the conference. A major milestone in the development of WSC was also reached in 1999, when the conference gained corporate sponsorship for the first time.
With the advent of the new millennium, WSC
introduced a totally web-based system for submission, review, revision,
and final delivery to the publisher of all technical articles handled
by the Proceedings Editors. Moreover, since 2000 the complete text
of each technical article in the latest Proceedings has been freely
accessible on-line via the INFORMS-SIM Web site ‹http://www.informs-sim.org›
shortly after the conference; and currently this website contains the
contents of the Proceedings for the years 1997–2008 in the form
of Portable Document Format (PDF) files from the corresponding CDs.
Beginning in 2002, the contents of the latest WSC Proceedings have
been available on the web on the day after the close of the conference,
with full search capability over all Proceedings articles back
to 1997. These developments have significantly enhanced the attractiveness
of the Proceedings to authors who seek the broadest, most timely
dissemination of their work to the worldwide simulation community.
As one measure of the growing stature and global scope of the conference,
we note that in 2005 approximately 30% of WSC authors were based outside
the
In the year leading up to WSC ’03, the WSC
Board of Directors undertook in April a fund-raising effort titled “Patrons
of WSC”. The donated funds were dedicated to the establishment of
an independent WSC Foundation <www.wscfoundation.org> whose trustees will manage the fund.
During 2003, the board also established the Board of Directors'
Award to recognize individuals or organizations for longstanding, distinguished
service to the conference; and the first such award was presented to Dr.
C. Dennis Pegden. The award has since been given to Richard
E Nance (2004),
In 2004 WSC emerged from a period of severely constrained budgets and limited growth that began shortly after the attacks of September, 11, 2001. The WSC '04 program featured a presentation-only "Case Studies" track designed to showcase leading-edge examples of simulation practice. WSC '04 also introduced the "Titans of Simulation" minitrack to provide leaders of the field with a high-visibility forum in an extended luncheon session that would complement the addresses given by the keynote and military keynote speakers.
In 2005, the WSC program was further expanded
with the addition of a one-day "Simulation for Managers" workshop
designed to introduce simulation modeling to business decision makers.
WSC '06 featured "Simulation 101," an intensive preconference
workshop for newcomers to
For the first time in 2008, the Winter Simulation Conference incorporated another conference. MASM (Modeling and Analysis for Semiconductor Manufacturing) Conference, the leading modeling and analysis conference for global semiconductor manufacturing and supply chain operations, ran as two complete tracks within WSC ‘08.
In addition to attaining a high level of maturity and professionalism over the past four decades, the Winter Simulation Conference has grown steadily in attendance. Over the past five years, conference attendance has averaged about 675. For more information on the history of WSC, see the articles on the conference website that are titled “The Winter Simulation Conference: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Progress” (http://www.wintersim.org/wsc92keynote.pdf, a 3.3-megabyte PDF file) and “The Winter Simulation Conference: Perspectives of the Founding Fathers” (http://www.wintersim.org/wsc92panel.pdf, a 2.8-megabyte PDF file), which have been extracted from the Proceedings of the 1992 Winter Simulation Conference (Swain et al. 1992). For a comprehensive picture of the recent state of WSC and the field of discrete-event and combined discrete-continuous simulation, see the Proceedings of the 2008 Winter Simulation Conference (Mason et al. 2008) which is freely accessible online via ‹ http://www.wintersim.org/prog08wsc.htm ›. For a table summarizing all Winter Simulation Conferences held to date, see the on-line document titled “WSC: Dates, Locations, Leaders, and Attendance” (http://www.wintersim.org/wschistory.htm).
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Further advances in system simulation will require coordinated improvements in education, methodology, and software and hardware development together with innovative, intelligent applications of simulation technology. By providing a common, broad-based forum for the diversity of professional interests held by the members of its sponsoring organizations, the Winter Simulation Conference will continue to serve as a catalyst for the interactions between simulation professionals in academia, government, and industry that are essential to future progress of the field. With the preservation and extension of its long-standing traditions, WSC should also provide a model for other conferences that are based on collaboration among several large professional societies.
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An earlier version of
this article by
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Mason, S.J, R.R.
Hill, L. Mönch,, T. Jefferson and J. Fowler
eds. 2008. Proceedings of the 2008
Winter Simulation Conference.
Swain, J. J., D. Goldsman, R. C. Crain, and
J. R. Wilson, eds. 1992. Proceedings
of the 1992 Winter Simulation Conference.
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JOE HUGAN is the president and owner of Forward Vision, a simulation consulting company
located in
ENVER
YÜCESAN is a Professor of Operations Management at INSEAD in
DOUGLAS M. MORRICE teaches Supply Chain
and Operations Management in the Red McCombs School of Business at The
University of Texas at
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