Introduction to Arena

The paper presents an overview of Arena-an extendible modeling system that is built on SIMAN/Cinema. Arena provides a complete simulation environment that supports all basic steps in a simulation study. The Arena system includes integrated support for input data analysis, model building, interactive execution, animation, and output analysis. Arena is a graphical modeling/animation system that is based on concepts from object-oriented programming and hierarchical modeling. Arena allows the user to create new modeling modules from basic modeling primitives that consist of SIMAN blocks and elements. These modules can be tailored to a specific problem domain and placed into libraries called templates. These application-focused templates in areas such as transportation, business process reengineering, high speed manufacturing, health care and many more bring simulation technology much closer to a large class of potential users.