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History of AnyLogic

In the beginning of 1990s there was a big interest in the mathematical approach to modeling and simulation of parallel processes. This approach may be applied to the analysis of correctness of parallel and distributed programs. The Distributed Computer Network (DCN) research group at Saint Petersburg Technical University developed such a software system for the analysis of program correctness; the new tool was named COVERS (Concurrent Verification and Simulation). This system allowed graphical modeling notation for system structure and behavior. The tool was applied for the research granted by Hewlett Packard (?).

In 1998 the success of this research inspired the DCN laboratory to organize a company with a mission to develop a new age simulation software. The emphasis in the development was placed on applied methods: simulation, performance analysis, behavior of stochastic systems, optimization and visualization. New software released in 2000 was based on the latest advantages of information technologies: an object-oriented approach, elements of the UML standard, the use of Java, a modern GUI, etc.

The tool was named AnyLogic, because it supported all three well-known modeling approaches:
  • System dynamics
    System dynamics
    System dynamics is an approach to understanding the behaviour of complex systems over time. It deals with internal feedback loops and time delays that affect the behaviour of the entire system. What makes using system dynamics different from other approaches to studying complex systems is the use...

    ,
  • Discrete event simulation
    Discrete Event Simulation
    In discrete-event simulation, the operation of a system is represented as a chronological sequence of events. Each event occurs at an instant in time and marks a change of state in the system...

    ,
  • Agent-based modeling.

+ Any combination of these approaches within a single model.
The first version of AnyLogic was AnyLogic 4, because the numbering continues the numbering of COVERS 3.0.

A big step was taken in 2003, when AnyLogic 5 was released. It was focused on business simulation in the following domains:
  • Market and Competition
    Marketing management
    Marketing management is a business discipline which is focused on the practical application of marketing techniques and the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities...

    ,
  • Healthcare,
  • Manufacturing
    Manufacturing
    Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

    ,
  • Supply Chain
    Supply chain
    A supply chain is a system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer. Supply chain activities transform natural resources, raw materials and components into a finished product that is delivered to...

    ,
  • Logistics
    Logistics
    Logistics is the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of destination in order to meet the requirements of customers or corporations. Logistics involves the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material handling, and packaging, and...

    ,
  • Retail
    Retail
    Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...

    ,
  • Business Processes,
  • Social
    Social
    The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...

     and Ecosystem
    Ecosystem
    An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

     Dynamics,
  • Defense
    Defense (military)
    Defense has several uses in the sphere of military application.Personal defense implies measures taken by individual soldiers in protecting themselves whether by use of protective materials such as armor, or field construction of trenches or a bunker, or by using weapons that prevent the enemy...

     ,
  • Project
    Project management
    Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end , undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value...

     and Asset Management,
  • IT Infrastructure
    Information technology management
    IT management is the discipline whereby all of the technology resources of a firm are managed in accordance with its needs and priorities. These resources may include tangible investments like computer hardware, software, data, networks and data centre facilities, as well as the staffs who are...

    ,
  • Pedestrian Dynamics
    Evacuation process simulation
    Evacuation simulation is a method to determine evacuation times for areas, buildings, or vessels. It is based on the simulation of crowd dynamics and pedestrian motion....

     and Traffic simulation,
  • Aerospace
    Aerospace
    Aerospace comprises the atmosphere of Earth and surrounding space. Typically the term is used to refer to the industry that researches, designs, manufactures, operates, and maintains vehicles moving through air and space...

    .
  • Photovoltaics
    Photovoltaics
    Photovoltaics is a method of generating electrical power by converting solar radiation into direct current electricity using semiconductors that exhibit the photovoltaic effect. Photovoltaic power generation employs solar panels composed of a number of solar cells containing a photovoltaic material...



The latest major version, AnyLogic 6, was released in 2007. The platform for AnyLogic 6 model development environment
Integrated development environment
An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

 is Eclipse
Eclipse (software)
Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...

. AnyLogic 6 is a cross-platform
Cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...

 simulation software
Simulation software
Simulation software is based on the process of modeling a real phenomenon with a set of mathematical formulas. It is, essentially, a program that allows the user to observe an operation through simulation without actually performing that operation...

 as far as it works on Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...

 and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

.

AnyLogic and Java

AnyLogic includes a graphical modeling language
Modeling language
A modeling language is any artificial language that can be used to express information or knowledge or systems in a structure that is defined by a consistent set of rules...

 and also allows the user to extend simulation model
Computer simulation
A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...

s with Java code. The Java nature of AnyLogic lends itself to custom model extensions via Java coding as well as the creation of Java applets which can be opened with any standard browser. These applets make AnyLogic models very easy to share or place on websites. In addition to Java applets the Professional version allows for the creation of Java runtime applications which can be distributed to users. These pure Java applications can be a base for decision support tools.

Multi-method simulation modeling

AnyLogic models can be based on any of the main simulation modeling paradigms: discrete event or process-centric
Discrete Event Simulation
In discrete-event simulation, the operation of a system is represented as a chronological sequence of events. Each event occurs at an instant in time and marks a change of state in the system...

 (DE), systems dynamics (SD), and agent-based (AB).

System dynamics and discrete event are traditional simulation approaches, agent based is new. Technically, the system dynamics approach deals mostly with continuous processes whereas "discrete event" (by which we mean all descendants of GPSS
GPSS
General Purpose Simulation System is a discrete time simulation language, where a simulation clock advances in discrete steps...

 also known as process-centric simulation approach) and agent based models work mostly in discrete time, i.e. jump from one event to another.

System dynamics and discrete event simulation historically have been taught at universities to very different groups of students, namely management
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...

 and economy
Economy
An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...

, industrial and operation research
Operations research
Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations...

 engineers. As a result, there are two distinct practitioners' communities that never talk to each other.

Agent based modeling until recently has been mostly a purely academic topic. However, the increasing demand for global business optimization caused leading modelers looking at combined approaches to gain a deeper insight into complex interdependent processes having very different natures.

How modeling approaches correspond to the abstraction levels. System dynamics dealing with aggregates is obviously used at the highest abstraction level. Discrete event modeling is used at low to middle abstraction. As for agent based modeling, this technology is used across all abstraction levels, and agent may model objects of very diverse nature and scale: at the "physical" level agents may be e.g. pedestrians or cars or robots, at the middle level – customers, at the highest level – competing companies.

AnyLogic allows the modeler to combine these simulation approaches within the same model. There is no fixed hierarchy. So, as an example, one could create a model of the package shipping industry where carriers are modeled as agents acting/reacting independently whereas the inner workings of their transport and infrastructure networks could be modeled with discrete event simulation. Similarly, one can model consumers as agents whose aggregate behavior feed a systems dynamics model capturing flows such as revenues or costs which do not need to be tied to individual agents. This mixed language approach is directly applicable to a wide variety of complex modeling problems that may be modeled via any one approach albeit with compromises.

Simulation language

The AnyLogic simulation language consists of following items:
  • Stock & Flow Diagrams are used for System Dynamics modeling.
  • Statecharts are used mostly in Agent Based modeling to define agent behavior. They are also often used in Discrete Event modeling, e.g. to simulate machine failure.
  • Action charts are used to define algorithms. They may be used in Discrete Event modeling, e.g. for call routing, or in Agent Based modeling, e.g. for agent decision logic.
  • Process flowcharts are the basic construction used to define process in Discrete Event modeling. Looking at this flowchart you may see why Discrete Event style is often called Process Centric.

The language also includes: low level modeling constructions (variables, equations, parameters, events etc.), presentation shapes (lines, polylines, ovals etc.), analysis facilities (datasets, histograms, plots), connectivity tools, standard images, and experiments frameworks.

AnyLogic libraries

AnyLogic includes the following standard libraries:
  • The Enterprise Library is designed to support DE simulation in Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Logistics and Healthcare areas. Using the Enterprise Library objects you can model real-world systems in terms of entities (transactions, customers, products, parts, vehicles, etc.), processes (sequences of operations typically involving queues, delays, resource utilization), and resources. The processes are specified in the form of flowcharts.
  • The Pedestrian Library is dedicated to simulate pedestrian flows in a "physical" environment. It allows you to create models of pedestrian-intensive buildings (like subway stations, security checks etc.) or streets (large numbers of pedestrians). Models support statistics collection on pedestrian density in different areas. This ensures acceptable performance of service points with a hypothetical load, estimates lengths of stay in specific areas, and detects potential problems with interior geometry – such as the effect of adding too many obstacles - and other applications. In models created with the Pedestrian Library pedestrians move in continuous space, reacting to different kinds of obstacles (walls, different kinds of areas) as well as other pedestrians. Pedestrians are simulated as interacting agents with complex behavior, but the AnyLogic Pedestrian Library provides a higher-level interface for fast creation of pedestrian models in the style of flowcharts.
  • The Rail Library supports modeling, simulating and visualizing operations of a rail yard of any complexity and scale. The rail yard models can be combined with discrete event or agent based models related to: loading and unloading, resource allocation, maintenance, business processes, and other transportation activities.


Beside of these standard libraries user can create his own libraries and distribute them.

See also


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
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