Towards COTS distributed simulation using GRIDS

Thr paper reports on continuing work that concerns research into the development of a commercial off the shelf (COTS) distributed simulation environment (federation) using the Generic Runtime Infrastructure for Distributed Simulation (GRIDS) to support the interoperation of simulation packages such as Arena, Extend, Simul8, Taylor, Witness, etc. The main aim of the work is to provide the industry with a business benefit from distributed simulation by making it possible to reuse previously developed models in order to address different problems within enterprises or between enterprises (supply chains) that could not otherwise be addressed due to barriers of cost and time. The approach emphasises transparency and minimal intervention with the simulation modeller. Two cases are presented: a distributed supply chain simulation (federation), and an example from the automotive industry