Serving a dual purpose, this book is written for novices who want to learn the basics of discrete simulation and professionals who wish to use discrete event simulation to model systems. The authors assume that the reader has a fundamental familiarity with modeling concepts and Excel; however, they do not assume prior programming experience. Organized into three parts, the book presents the concepts of discrete simulation, covers the Design Environment for Event Driven Simulation (DEEDS), and discusses a variety of applications using DEEDS. The DEEDS research features are demonstrated and genetic algorithm techniques are integrated into the DEEDS environment to produce a powerful tool.