Abstract

Models are everywhere. From simple mathematical equations to a schematic representation of a water filtering plant to a waiting line at the cash registry in a super market. They're often used to get a solid understanding of business flows, system flows, proof-of-concepts, factories... Different modeling languages within the domain of Modeling and Simulation (M&S) can be used for various purposes. A subset of these languages describes discrete-event systems and can be further separated based on their world view: event scheduling, activity scheduling or process interaction. This thesis will use the modeling formalism of Discrete EVent Systems (DEVS), a general-purpose event-scheduling language, to create a generic building block library (BBL). Multiple tools, that are currently used for big systems by major companies, will be explored as a foundation for this library. Additionally, the General Purpose Simulation System (GPSS), an example language in the process interaction world view, will be described and a subset thereof will be translated onto the DEVS formalism. This way, we benefit from the advantages that DEVS offers, while still enabling the strengths of GPSS. Accompanied with this paper, there is a Python-implementation (based on the Python(P)DEVS kernel) of the building blocks and the translation that will be discussed in these pages.

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