A soft systems approach to input distribution estimation for a non-stationary demand process

  • Authors:
  • J. Harold Pardue;Jeffrey P. Landry;Thomas D. Clark, Jr.

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Information and Management Sciences, The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida;Department of Information and Management Sciences, The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida;College of Business Administration, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

  • Venue:
  • WSC '95 Proceedings of the 27th conference on Winter simulation
  • Year:
  • 1995

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Abstract

A soft systems methodology is undertaken to develop a design for a communications system to support a political campaign. The focus is on the methodology to estimate an input distribution for a SLAM-based simulation model. Two problems-the lack of referent system data and the expectation of non-stationary system demand-indicate a need for a soft systems approach. The results of this study suggest that the approach is effective for estimating an input distribution for simulation analysis. The case provides an example of the contrast between the soft systems and hard systems approaches.