Proceedings of the Operational Research Society Simulation Workshop 2012 (SW12) B.Tjahjono, C. Heavey, S. Onggo, and D-J. van der Zee, eds. THE POTENTIAL ROLE OF OPEN SOURCE DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION SOFTWARE IN THE MANUFACTURING SECTOR Mr. Néill Byrne Dr. Paul Liston Dublin City University Dublin City University Dublin, Ireland Dublin, Ireland neill.byrne@dcu.ie paul.liston@dcu.ie Dr. John Geraghty Dr. Paul Young Dublin City University Dublin City University Dublin, Ireland Dublin, Ireland john.geraghty@dcu.ie paul.young@dcu.ie ABSTRACT Discrete event simulation (DES) is a valuable tool in the manufacturing sector due to its flexibility and ability to model even very complex systems, given sufficient time and resources. Despite its strengths, there seems to be less penetration in this industry than expected. Models are typically one- off projects that are not maintained beyond the initial analysis. Industry based research conducted through the Irish Centre for Manufacturing Research suggests that due to cost and licensing restrictions, modelling is limited to a single user and consequently the associated skillsets are not developed more widely across the organisation. A possible solution is the use of open source DES which does not carry the same cost and licensing restrictions as the equivalent proprietary software. This paper reports on some of the open source packages currently on offer and provides a case study based comparison of open source and proprietary DES software. Keywords: Open source software, Simulation standards 1 INTRODUCTION The manufacturing sector has provided many interesting challenges for discrete event simulation (DES) modellers over the decades and there are numerous publications detailing how it has been used to gain tangible benefits and economic return (e.g. Harrell et al. (2010)). The ability to capture stochastic and dynamic behaviour and convergent material flows allows DES to more comprehensively represent these systems than other analysis method (Huang et al. 2003). In a recent review of the literature, Jahangirian et al. (2010) report that research activity in this area has seen a substantial increase in real problem solving, and suggest that this may be due to accumulated knowledge and experience in industry, the availability of tools and greater awareness of the benefits. While this is encouraging for the DES community, given the maturity of DES methods and the wealth of potential industrial applications, the authors suggest that the take-up rate of DES across manufacturing companies is still remarkably low and chiefly confined to large well-resourced organisations. DES has typically supported longer term strategic and capital investment decisions, and has been less often used to support regular or real time decision making. Consequently simulation projects are usually concerned with a series of once-off analyses, between which, the stakeholders go back to their daily activities or move on to other roles. Consequently, the momentum and experience gained is lost