Spreadsheets as a Tool for Teaching Simulation

Simulation can be a difficult subject to teach, as most commercial software requires learning new approaches and time is limited, particularly in business overview courses. Spreadsheets have a distinct advantage in that most students developed a high level of expertise prior to taking management science courses. As such, they provide an ideal platform on which to learn the basics of simulation methodology. In this paper, we describe the use of spreadsheets as a tool for teaching simulation for both pure Monte-Carlo approaches focusing on the advantages of using Excel add-ins, and for simple systems simulation models such as queueing.