Why simulation at a business school?
While simulation is important in many subjects, like engineering, its role within the business school curriculum has not been sufficiently appreciated. With the development of WebGPSS done at a business school, and with decades of experience from teaching simulation at several business schools, we can conclude that simulation should play a significant role in a business school curriculum.
The main reason is that it can replace many analytical/optimization parts of OR or MS methods, for example queuing theory, inventory theory, PERT/CPM, and decision theory.
It has proved advantageous to cover many problem areas with one single easy-to-use method instead of many complex methods. This has allowed us to focus more on modeling the studied problems.
Simulation furthermore plays a significant role in the teaching of production management, forecasting and decision theory. Simulation involving production has allowed our business students a better understanding of the physical processes in firm and to see the connection between the physical activities and the financial flows.
Simulation based costing, as a special version of ABC (activity based costing), is furthermore important in accounting.