[ewilliams]

Greetings.
In my opinion and experience, modeling of humans can be captured partly, but not fully, by DES. For example, DES can accommodate data or hypotheses such as "during the last two hours of the shift, the worker works 10% slower due to fatigue," or such as "worker #1 is more skilled than worker #2; either #1 or #2 can be assigned to a task but worker #1 will need 5% less time," or clients would rather deal with bank teller #1 than bank teller #2 because, although they are equally efficient, teller #1 is more friendly; therefore clients will go to teller #1 if both are free when the client enters the bank. DES cannot adequately, by itself, model situations such as the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome, rotator cuff injury, or hypothermia due to the cumulative effect of adverse working conditions (these are continuous processes within the worker's body), nor is it the best tool to model issues such as "if this workstation is implemented as designed, only 10% of males and 3% of females can undertake the reaching required without repetitive stress injury, but a redesign could raise these percentages to 80% of males and 60% of females." DES often can model interactions among humans (such as "which passport line will the next traveler approach or which pathway through a subway station will the next traveler take, given observable behavior such as where the last few travelers have walked"). To capture such interactions, agent-based discrete simulators (such as AnyLogic) are often more appropriate than process-based simulators (such as Arena). Most importantly, as you undertake the IE work you have briefly described, I urge you to eschew the thought "I must choose one analytical technique (e.g., DES, ergonomics, value-stream mapping, scheduling algorithms....) in favor of a holistic approach in which you have many analytical approaches in your mind's toolbox and many analytical software tools available on your computer or in your computer laboratory.