What is a Simulation?

After you have designed a business process model, ALBPM Studio allows you to run process simulations to determine the efficiency of the process. You can also use simulations to test the effects of changes on your process design.

Simulations allow you to mimic the execution of a process to identify any potential problems in its design. Within a project, you can simulate the execution of multiple processes simultaneously using different simulation models.

A process simulation does not execute each individual task within a process. The code within an activities task is not executed, variables are not assigned values, and external resources are not updated. However, you can mimic the behavior of activities within your process by configuring different attributes of the activity within a simulation model, including the following:

duration
resources
costs
transitions

Simulation Models

To execute a process simulation, you must define simulation models. Simulation models allow you to specify behavior of each element of your process. There are two types of simulation models in ALBPM Studio:

Simulation Model	Description
Process Simulation Models	Allow you to define the behavior for an individual process. See Process Simulation Model.
Project Simulation Models	Allow you to define the behavior for an entire project. A project simulation model is composed of a group of process simulation models. Within a project simulation models you can choose which process simulation models to run. See Project Simulation Models.

You can configure multiple simulations models for a project and its processes. This allows you to mimic different combinations of resources, etc.

Round-trip Simulation

Round-tip Simulation provides a way to create process simulation models based on real-world data. When creating a process simulation model using round-trip simulation, data is imported from the Process Execution Engine Database. You can use data imported from the following environments:

Process Execution Engine Database	Uses
Studio	Using data from Studio's process execution engine, you can quickly create a process simulation model.
Enterprise	Using data from the Enterprise process execution engine allows you to create process simulation model based on 'real-world' data. You can use this data to create a base-line simulation that mimics the performance of your processes. This base-line can be compared to simulations of revised processes to determine how performance can be improved.

Note: After creating a process simulation model using round-trip simulation, you must manually enable it in your Project Simulation Model. See Creating a Project Simulation Model.