Simulation-Based VV&A Methodology for HLA Federations: an Example from the Aerospace Industry

This paper establishes a methodology for the validation of a whole federation of simulation models which represent the reality of the supply chain in the context of the aerospace industry. There are many possible ways to address this problem, among these, the simplest way appears to be the analysis of the real-life situation, based on historical data. The use of historical data is not always a viable approach, due to the lack of a sufficiently extensive pool of reliable data. Therefore a simulation-based VV&A approach is often required before the operative use of models. Historical data is reproduced through a long series of runs of a simulation meta-model. The major issue associated to the validation of a federation of simulation models is that each simulation model needs to be validated as stand-alone and at the same time it needs to be validated as a member of the whole federation, or of a portion of it.