Challenges of introducing simulation as a decision making tool

Over the years, simulation models have been successfully built to observe the behavior of systems. Despite advances in the field and its growth in popularity, when simulation is to be introduced to an organization, there are challenges to be met including acceptance by staff, availability of staff to describe the various operations, existence of useful data, and management expectations. Organizations are continuously collecting data, which may lead one to believe that developing stochastic models of an organization´s activities should be easy. However, elicitation of useful information may end up being a major bottleneck because usually the information system collecting such data is not designed for stochastic modeling. Unrealistic management expectations may result in simulation modeling being thrown away when these expectations are not met. Success in introducing simulation modeling will depend heavily on how well these challenges are addressed and managed