The trends in simulation application areas follows:

• At present, simulation for risk analysis is growing, including in such areas as insurance, option pricing, and portfolio analysis.

• Another growing area is call-centre analysis, which is not amenable to queuing models because of its complexity.

• Simulation of large-scale systems such as the internet backbone wireless network and supply chains are growing as hardware and software increase their capability to handle extremelylarge numbers of entities in a reasonable time.

• Lastly, simulation models of automated material handling systems (AMHS) are being used as test beds for the development and functional testing of control system software.

• Called emulation, the simulation model is connected in real time to the control system software or to a software emulator; it is used to provide the same responses to a control system as the real AMHS does.

• Software development can begin much earlier during AMHS installation and commissioning, to reduce the time spent in the time spent in the field on trying to debug control software while attempting to ramp up a new system or continue running an existing one.

• Models have been driven by control systems at various levels from high level supervisory systems, such as warehouse management systems or AGV dispatching systems, to such low level control as programmable logic controllers (PLC’s) controlling mergers on a conveyor system.

• High Fidelity Simulation: It represents an exceptional graphics quality and very accurate emulation.

• The term “virtual” is often used to say that the emulation is nearly the same as that which is being model.

• Data Exchange Standards: The Simulation Data Exchange file is used as input information to generate and run a simulation model of either the entire layout represented on the drawing or a specific windowed area.

• The Internet: Web based Simulation is an emerging area of investigation within the simulation community. Web based simulation is typically used to denote the invocation of simulation programs over the Internet, through a web browser.

• Distributed Computing Support: It has a modeling capability that can be delivered to the user.

• Embedded Simulation: It occurs when simulation models are placed in other software. It offers a rich area of growth for the modeling and simulation industry.

• Optimization: Simulation Optimization problem is an optimization problem where the objective function and/or some constraints, are responses that can be evaluated by computer simulation. It also addresses the issues of computation time.