Project  2     Grocery Store Simulation  20 points

This is one of three major individual assignments that you are required to complete in this class. You MUST design and code this project on your own. You can ask for debugging help, particularly from the tutors, TA or instructor, but this project is to be your own work. The project relies on knowledge and skills that you will develop in class and during the recitations. If you are having trouble with these recitations after your in-class session, please be sure that you come to the lab at another time and sit down with a tutor.

Objectives:

• Understand how event-driven simulation works.
• Use queues in a realistic application.
• Learn about empirical approaches to performance assessment.
• Use appropriate classes.
• Understand a program in which multiple classes collaborate to solve a problem.

Hand-in Requirements:

• All Classes 15 points
• Sample output and your Report 5 points
  

Overview:  

This project is based on simulation of a grocery store and how it manages customers in line waiting for a checkout person.  You can imagine that you have been hired by a new grocery store to evaluate the optimal way to set up lines for their store.  Here are the two possible ways.

1. There are a certain number of checkout stations that are all fed by one line.  As a checkout station becomes available the next person in the single line will go to that checkout station.  This is similar to how banks take care of their customers.
2. There are a certain number of checkout stations and each has its own line.  As a checkout station finishes one customer it takes care of the next customer in its line.  For simplicity we will not allow customers to jump from one line to another. 
   

Specifics:

To keep the simulation simple we will assume there are three checkouts.  To make it realistic, the time each customer takes at a checkout station will be randomly distrubuted. 

The first approach will be developed in a simulationModel called singleLineModel it will be tested by a class called singleLineModelTester. The second approach will be developed in a simulationModel called multiLineModel it will be tested by a class called multiLineModelTester.  Each of the two models will have a single incoming line, but different configurations of  "buffered rounter"(s) and outgoing line(s).

TESTING

Report