COMMENT ON SIMULATION VERSUS ANALYSIS.

This note comments on the article by R. J. Paul and R. E. Stevens, which presents an application of waiting line concepts in staffing service activities. A retail department store is used as an illustration. Paul and Stevens neglected to point out that a retail store opening and closing each day introduces transients in systems behavior that are very difficult to assess analytically. "Rule-5" in the Paul-Stevens paper presents a situation that is not part of the theoretical queuing model and cannot readily be studied by analytical methods. Also, footnote 1 neglects to point out that pure random variation, programming conventions, the uniform variate generator, initial transient behavior of the run, and numerical error can also explain difference between simulated and theoretical results.