Distributed Simulation with COTS Simulation Packages: A Case Study in Health Care Supply Chain Simulation

Mustafee, Navonil; Taylor, Simon J. E.; Katsaliaki,; Brailsford, Sally C.

doi:10.1109/wsc.2006.323204

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…One aspect of the labour ward (such as number of deliveries per year, or number of midwives on each shift) can be changed while everything else is held constant to forecast the expected change in performance. Simulation has been widely used to model and analyse healthcare environments, 14,15 including its use to predict required nurse staffing. 16,17 We used computer simulation of labour wards to investigate the expected effect of changing midwife numbers throughout the day and week.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Providing one‐to‐one care in labour. Analysis of ‘Birthrate Plus’ labour ward staffing in real and simulated labour ward environments

Allen

Thornton

2012

BJOG

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Objective To assess the ability of the 'Birthrate Plus' (BR+) midwife staffing system to cope with variability of workload on labour wards.Design Retrospective analysis of labour ward workload and computer simulation of labour wards.Setting The labour ward of a city hospital.Population A total of 5800 births (1 year).Methods The variation in births by time and day was analysed over a 1-year period. Three months of BR+ data were analysed for variation of workload by case mix. A computer simulation model was built to allow prediction of the impact of changing resource levels or shift patterns, and to forecast the impact of changing number of births per year.Main outcome measures Labour ward overloading (when either the number of women or the BR+ Workload Index exceeds the scheduled midwife availability).Results Labour ward overload occurred 37% of the time when applying the BR+ method. Underlying patterns of workload were present and simulation indicated that overload could be reduced by 15-25% if available resources were matched more closely to known patterns of workload. Simulation also indicated that smaller units are predicted to suffer from overload more often than larger units, and are more prone to severe overload.ConclusionsThe BR+ formula for midwife staffing leaves labour wards vulnerable to significant periods of overload. Matching resource levels to known patterns of workload may reduce the occurrence of overload. Simulation indicates that smaller units need higher relative staffing levels to provide the same level of 1:1 care to mothers in labour.Keywords Birthrate+, labor, personnel staffing and scheduling, quality improvement.Please cite this paper as: Allen M, Thornton S. Providing one-to-one care in labour. Analysis of 'BirthratePlus' labour ward staffing in real and simulated labour ward environments. BJOG 2013;120:100-107.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Providing one‐to‐one care in labour. Analysis of ‘Birthrate Plus’ labour ward staffing in real and simulated labour ward environments

Allen

Thornton

2012

BJOG

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“…The NBS Distributed Simulation was created using the Defense Modeling and Simulation Offices (DMSO) RTI [29] and extended our earlier work on Simul8/DMSO RTI integration [30] using techniques based on the CSPI standards. The NBS distributed simulation fits the profile of the Type A.1 Interoperability Reference Model (Entity Transfer, T1<T2), i.e.…”

Section: Creating the Nbs Distributed Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facilitating the Analysis of a UK National Blood Service Supply Chain Using Distributed Simulation

et al. 2009

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In an attempt to investigate blood unit ordering policies, researchers have created a discreteevent model of the UK National Blood Service (NBS) supply chain in the Southampton area of the UK. The model has been created using Simul8, a commercial-off-the-shelf discrete-event simulation package (CSP). However, as more hospitals were added to the model, it was discovered that the length of time needed to perform a single simulation severely increased. It has been claimed that distributed simulation, a technique that uses the resources of many computers to execute a simulation model, can reduce simulation runtime. Further, an emerging standardized approach exists that supports distributed simulation with CSPs. These CSP Interoperability (CSPI) standards are compatible with the IEEE 1516 standard The High Level Architecture, the defacto interoperability standard for distributed simulation. To investigate if distributed simulation can reduce the execution time of NBS supply chain simulation, this paper presents experiences of creating a distributed version of the CSP Simul8 according to the CSPI/HLA standards. It shows that the distributed version of the simulation does indeed run faster when the model reaches a certain size. Further, we argue that understanding the relationship of model features is key to performance. This is illustrated by experimentation with two different protocols implementations (using Time Advance Request (TAR) and Next Event Request (NER)). Our contribution is therefore the demonstration that distributed simulation is a useful technique in the timely execution of supply chains of this type and that careful analysis of model features can further increase performance.

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“…a reduction in the execution time of the simulation) as well as the need to couple heterogeneous and possibly geographically distributed simulation components. It may also be the case that the complexity of a model (e.g., its memory and computing requirements) simply make the model unsuited for monolithic model execution (Mustafee et. al 2006).…”

Section: Distributed Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scalability in distributed simulations of agent-based models

Pawlaszczyk¹,

Strassburger²

2009

Proceedings of the 2009 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC)

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Research on systems of autonomous agents, called multiagent systems (MAS), has received much interest in the domain of (distributed) artificial intelligence in recent years. MAS are most suitable for the development of distributed applications within an uncertain and dynamically changing environment (Logan 2005). For validation of such systems agent based simulation is a new modeling paradigm not limited to systems which qualify as MAS by default. The focus of the work presented here is on scalability aspects of simulation environments for agent based simulations. Scalable solutions are required, as complex models require the capability to simulate hundreds or more complex deliberative agents. This is a capability which is often lacking in existing simulation environments for agents. We investigate different aspects which influence scalability and present a solution for enabling a scalable and efficient distributed simulation of agent-based models based on an adapted optimistic synchronization protocol which limits the level of optimism by using knowledge about agent interaction patterns.

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Distributed Simulation with COTS Simulation Packages: A Case Study in Health Care Supply Chain Simulation

Cited by 8 publications

References 10 publications

Providing one‐to‐one care in labour. Analysis of ‘Birthrate Plus’ labour ward staffing in real and simulated labour ward environments

Providing one‐to‐one care in labour. Analysis of ‘Birthrate Plus’ labour ward staffing in real and simulated labour ward environments

Facilitating the Analysis of a UK National Blood Service Supply Chain Using Distributed Simulation

Scalability in distributed simulations of agent-based models

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