New advances and applications of combining simulation and optimization

The area of integrating simulation and optimization has recently undergone remarkable changes. New advances are making available applications of simulation that previously had been considered infeasible or beyond the scope of current technology to handle. This paper describes recently developed computer software that effectively integrates simulation and optimization. The software employs graphics to show the perfonnance of the search mechanisms that control the integration. We also demonstrate the ability of the system to find optimal and near optimal solutions in minutes for applications where an exhaustive exarnination of relevant alternatives requires days or months. The scaling of reduced time applies equally to settings where simulation runs require greater time. As a result, for a selected practical time limit, the new approach provides the opportunity to obtain decisions and scenarios whose quality greatly exceeds the quality available in the past.