Quality assessment of the simulation modeling process

Quality assessment is not common practice in the engineering field of simulation modeling. Though the well-known quality aspects (correctness, reliability, usability, etc.) are relevant to simulation modeling, model validation is the favorite simulation feature. This does not imply that a successful model validation will guarantee a proper handling of the other quality aspects. In this paper an integrated approach to the quality improvement problem is proposed. This approach incorporates project management, good practice in software engineering and improvement of the simulation modeling process (SMP) in particular. The SMP has to be optimized by means of a model (QUASIMODEM) of the SMP. QUASIMODEM will facilitate the intended improvements through five stages of the upgrading process. QUASIMODEM has been designed as a tool and will be built to support this approach.