The Society of Manufacturing Engineers sponsors webinars that are typically hosted by one or more of their Technical Community Network (TCN) tech groups, technical events, and/or professional development. Webinars help SME fulfill its mission, which is to acquire and distribute manufacturing knowledge among its members and the broader manufacturing community.

Lean manufacturing seminars are presented at various times throughout the year.

http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/getsmepg.pl?/html/webinars/lean.htm&&&SME&

Washington, DC USA

Statistics is undoubtedly one of the most useful of all disciplines, since virtually all organizations have data from which inferences must be drawn. In Applied Statistics for Engineers and Scientists you will learn the fundamental concepts of applied statistics; including descriptive statistics, confidence intervals, hypothesis tests, analysis of variance, regression analysis, and distribution fitting, and be able to apply them immediately to the problems that you encounter on the job. This will be accomplished by lectures that carefully explain each statistical technique and then illustrate it by one or more examples using real-world data. This is reinforced by an extensive number of in-class exercises that students perform using a calculator or Excel. Whether you are new to statistics or looking for a refresher course, you will find this seminar a great way to get up to speed quickly in a cost-effective manner.

Dr. Averill M. Law, the course instructor, has taught statistical concepts and techniques for more than 35 years, both in 17 years of university teaching and in presenting more than 500 short courses in 18 countries. He is the developer of ExpertFit®, which has been the world's leading distribution-fitting software since 1983. Dr. Law is the author or coauthor of three books and numerous journal articles. He has been a tenured faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Arizona. He has a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.

Washington, DC USA

This course, Simulation Modeling for System Design and Analysis I: Fundamental Principles, is designed for operations research analysts, management scientists, systems analysts, military planners, engineers, computer scientists, and technical managers who would like to use simulation to design and optimize real-world systems. It encompasses a full spectrum of applications, including defense, manufacturing, transportation, process reengineering, contact centers, supply chains, computer and communications systems, healthcare, and services. The course presents definitive methods for developing a simulation model, ensuring its validity, choosing simulation software, selecting input probability distributions, analyzing simulation runs, and project management. A case study illustrates the step-by-step application of simulation modeling techniques.

The prerequisite for this seminar is a basic course in statistics

Washington, DC USA

This course, Simulation Modeling for System Design and Analysis II: Advanced Concepts, will discuss practical and easy-to-understand statistical techniques for comparing alternative system designs, variance-reduction techniques for obtaining more precise simulation results for the same amount of computing, the use of experimental design techniques to determine important system factors, and simulation-based optimization. The course will also present an introduction to agent-based simulation, which is arguably the "hottest" topic in simulation modeling today. All topics will be illustrated by one or more examples or case studies.

The prerequisite for this seminar is the "Fundamental Principles" course or the equivalent knowledge.

Washington, DC USA

The purpose of this seminar, How to Validate your Models and Simulations, is to present a comprehensive discussion of practical techniques for validating your models and simulations. All techniques will be illustrated by one or more examples based on actual simulation projects. At the end of the seminar, each attendee will be familiar with "the" twelve fundamental validation techniques and know how to apply them to their models and simulations.

A particular highlight of this seminar is the discussion and illustration of an assumptions document, which is a detailed report delineating all model concepts, assumptions, algorithms, and data summaries. It serves as the main vehicle for communications among the project team, and it is a "blueprint" for creating the simulation computer program. It should not be confused with a conceptual model, which can be thought of as initial ideas on what a model will look like.

Washington, DC USA

Discrete-event and agent-based simulation models often have many input factors, and determining which ones have a significant impact on performance measures (responses) of interest can be a truly daunting task. The common approach of changing one factor at a time is statistically inefficient and, more importantly, is very often just incorrect, because for many models factors interact to impact on the responses. In this seminar, Design of Experiments for Simulation Modeling: Factor Screening, Prediction, and Optimization, we present a comprehensive introduction to design of experiments (DOE), whose major goal in simulation modeling is to determine which factors have the greatest effect on the responses , and to do so with the least amount of simulating. Another important use of DOE is to develop a metamodel (a model of a model) or response surface based on the important factors to predict the model responses for factor combinations that were not actually simulated, since the execution time for the simulation model might be large.

Discrete-event and agent-based simulation models often have many input factors, and determining which ones have a significant impact on performance measures (responses) of interest can be a truly daunting task. The common approach of changing one factor at a time is statistically inefficient and, more importantly, is very often just incorrect, because for many models factors interact to impact on the responses. This seminar, Design of Experiments for Simulation Modeling, presents a comprehensive introduction to design of experiments (DOE) specifically for simulation modeling, whose major goal is to determine which factors have the greatest effect on the responses, and to do so with the least amount of simulating. Other important uses of DOE are to develop a response surface (or metamodel) based on the important factors to predict the model response for factor combinations that were not actually simulated or to find the factor-level combination that optimizes the simulation response.

A simple and widely applicable approach to performing DOE in the context of simulation modeling is discussed, whereas commonly used methods based on classical statistics (i.e., ANOVA) make unrealistic assumptions such as constant variances and normally distributed residuals. Furthermore, the common remedy of transforming the data often does not work either. Important DOE techniques will be demonstrated using a leading statistical package.

Washington, DC USA

This one-day seminar, Agent-Based Simulation: A New Approach to Systems Modeling, provides a comprehensive introduction to agent-based simulation. In an agent-based simulation, autonomous agents (people, vehicles, organizations, etc.), which have attributes and potentially complex behaviors, interact with each other and their environment over time toward the accomplishment of their goals. This allows an agent's behavior to depend on the current and past states of its environment, rather than being "scripted," which permits much more complicated behaviors to be represented as compared to traditional models. The interactions of the "low-level" agents often result in complex emergent behavior for the system as a whole.

Agent-based simulation has been successfully applied to a diverse set of problems, and improved software packages have facilitated the model-development process.

Tucson, AZ USA

Averill M. Law & Associates has offered comprehensive modeling and simulation seminars since 1977, having presented more than 440 courses in 18 countries. Public and onsite seminars include:

	Simulation Modeling for System Design and Analysis, I: Fundamental Principles
	Simulation Modeling for System Design and Analysis, II: Advanced Concepts
	How to Build Valid and Credible Models
	Agent-Based Simulation: A New Approach to Systems Modeling
	Design of Experiments For Simulation Modeling
	Simulation Modeling for Military Decision-Makers