Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series

Young-Jun Son, Ph.D., is a professor and department head of the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering at The University of Arizona. He is a department editor of IISE Transactions, and serves on the editorial board for six other international journals. He is an IISE Fellow, and has received several research awards such as the SME 2004 Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, the IIE 2005 Outstanding Young Industrial Engineer Award, the Industrial Engineering Research Conference Best Paper Award (in 2005, 2008, 2009, and 2016), and the Best Paper of the Year Award (2007) in the International Journal of Industrial Engineering. His research works have been sponsored by NSF, AFOSR, USDOT, USDA, USDOE, NIST, among others. He can be reached at son@sie.arizona.edu.

In this talk, we first discuss three major simulation modeling paradigms: 1) discrete event (DE), 2) agent-based (AB), and 3) system dynamics (SD). A product diffusion model is then used to prove that AB and SD models essentially represent the same system state via probability theory and solving differential equations. We then discuss innovative uses of multi-paradigm simulations to support planning and control decisions. We will discuss a simulation-based planning and control (SPC) approach, where a fast-running DE simulation is used to evaluate decision alternatives at the planning stage, and the same simulation model (running in real-time) is used as a task generator to drive a real system (e.g. shop floor system; border patrol system) at the control stage. We then discuss the extension of the SPC approach to enterprise level activities (e.g. top floor). To handle computational complexity, both an aggregation approach involving SD models as well as a federation of multiple DE models using web services technologies are discussed. Finally, we discuss a highly detailed AB model, where human behaviors (e.g. evacuation from factory fire; border trafficking behavior) are represented by an extended Belief-Desire-Intention (E-BDI) framework.

Event Topic

Distinguished Lecture Series