Doing simulation for a living

For more than half a century, simulation has proven to be a successful companion to decision makers and analysts around the world, with several packages being successfully used by thousands of modelers, our team being one of them. Despite great popularity and success, however, there have been issues and short-comings that may threaten the accuracy and efficiency of the model as a decision-making tool. In this light, working with simulation for a living requires special requirements in order to ensure success. As such, there are several experience-based practices that can reverse the negative effect of these issues and even position simulation at a higher rank among decision-making tools. This shall be a summary of the issues and shortcomings faced by our simulation team throughout the past ten years (2001 - 2011) fol-lowed by a presentation of the team´s best practices, which ultimately lead to a more efficient and stream-lined simulation management tool and methodology.