A distributed simulation methodological framework for OR/MS applications

•Methodology for Operations Research and Management Science Distributed Simulation.•Simulation models interoperability for multi-node execution.•Distributed Agent-Based and Discrete Event Simulation for Emergency Medical Services.•Combined methods Operations Research Distributed Simulation applications.•Guidelines for Operations Research Distributed Simulations with HLA standards.

Distributed Simulation (DS) allows existing models to be composed together to form simulations of large-scale systems, or large models to be divided into models that execute on separate computers. Among its claimed benefits are model reuse, speedup, data privacy and data consistency. DS is arguably widely used in the defence sector. However, it is rarely used in Operations Research and Management Science (OR/MS) applications in areas such as manufacturing and healthcare, despite its potential advantages. The main barriers to use DS in OR/MS are the technical complexity in implementation and a gap between the world views of DS and OR/MS communities. In this paper, we propose a new method that attempts to link together the methodological practices of OR/MS and DS. Using a representative case study, we show that our methodological framework simplifies significantly DS implementation.