Clarifying Interoperability: The SISO CSPI PDG Standard for Commercial Off-The-Shelf Simulation Package Interoperability Reference Models

For many years discrete-event simulation has been used to analyze production and logistics problems in manufacturing and defense. Commercial-off-the-shelf simulation packages (CSPs), visual interactive modelling environments such as Arena, Anylogic, Flexsim, Simul8, Witness, etc., support the development, experimentation and visualization of simulation models. There have been various attempts to create distributed simulations with these CSPs and their tools, some with the high level architecture (HLA). These are complex and it is quite difficult to assess how a set of models/CSP are actually interoperating. As the first in a series of standards aimed at standardizing how the HLA is used to support CSP distributed simulations, the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization's (SISO) CSP Interoperability Product Development Group (CSPI PDG) has developed and standardized a set of interoperability reference models (IRM) that are intended to clearly identify the interoperability capabilities of CSP distributed simulations.