Limitations of calculating theoretical solutions for closed BCMP queueing networks and verification of alternative theoretical values by parallel simulation

This study applied a closed BCMP queueing network to a real-world model, examining the limitations of the theoretical solution and the possibility of replacing theoretical values with those from parallel simulation. Parallel computing was applied to mean value analysis (MVA). We first obtained computational and theoretical values by varying the number of nodes from 33 to 300 and customers from 250 to 1500 in a system with three customer classes. The computation time increased proportionally with the number of nodes but exponentially with the number of customers, reaching 146,798.86 seconds for 33 nodes, 3 customer classes, and 1500 customers. We then considered a system with more customer classes; due to the greater computational burden, we proposed addressing this problem with simulation. By using a large-scale computing environment (a supercomputer), it was possible to obtain the theoretical solutions for up to three customer classes and verify the simulation accuracy. The parallel simulations’ performance-evaluation indices, such as the average number of people in the system, converged to the theoretical values within an acceptable error range after 100,000 simulation hours for systems with four or more customer classes. These results demonstrate that the proposed parallel simulation approach can serve as an accurate and computationally efficient alternative to theoretical solutions for large-scale closed BCMP queueing networks.