Simulation of Sports Facilities at University of

Cincinnati Campus Recreation Center

By:
Nikhil Shaganti
MID: M07428499
MS- Business Analytics
Carl.H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments.3
List of Figures...............4
Objectives of the study......................5
About UC Campus Recreation Center.............. 5
Scope of Simulation.............. 6
Data Collection
Fitting Distributions for Wait times8
Challenges Faced.9
Assumptions..10
Fitness Center Model.....9
Basic Model.9
Updated Model- More Realistic10
Swimming Pool Model13
Output Analysis...14
Conclusion...18
References...19

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Acknowledgements
With sincere gratitude, I would like to express my special thank you to Professor
Dr. W. David Kelton. This project would have never been completed without his
direction, assistance, and encouragement.

I would also like to thank my parents, for their endless support during each and
every one of my lifes endeavors.

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List of Figures
Figure 1. Triangular distribution observed in Input Analyzer for
Fitness Center Wait times..... 8
Figure 2. Triangular distribution observed in Input Analyzer for
Swimming Pool Wait times...8
Figure 3. Assign Module to choose second and third work out
Dependently..11
Figure 4. Fitness Center- Updated Model in Arena...........................................................12
Figure 5. Hold Module to wait for empty lane...13
Figure 6. Swimming Pool Model in Arena13
Figure 7. Different scenarios analyzed in Process Analyzer.15
Figure 8. Box-Whisker plot in Process Analyzer showing statistical
significance of utilizations across different models16

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Objectives of the Study

1. Simulate a part of Fitness Center and Swimming pool at UC Campus
Recreation Center
2. To determine the current resource utilization, queueing status of these
facilities and exploring options to improve.

About UC Campus Recreation Center

University of Cincinnati Campus Recreation Center (CRC) is ranked No.1 in the
nation for its innovative design and facilities. The CRC is an impressive building,
with over 200,000 square feet of recreation facilities. It has three pools, over
21,000 pounds of weights, a climbing wall, a suspended track, volleyball courts,
basketball courts and many other sports facilities. With a heavy focus on
swimming and other aquatic sports, the facility is a big bonus in Ohios extreme
winter. University of Cincinnati has always placed a premium on impressive
architecture, and the CRC is an example of this. UCs facilities for student athletes
are also impressive. The building is wedged into a tight spot between the football
stadium (Nippert) and basketball stadium and was built when UC joined the Big
East conference.

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Scope of Simulation
University of Cincinnati Campus Recreation Center is ranked the best in the
Nation for its variety of facilities. So there is need for the management to
constantly evaluate whether the facilities provided in the Recreation center are
sufficient to maintain its status. Important factors while evaluation are resource
utilization and queuing status. Like any other organization, even the sports facility
must also maximize its resource utilization to maintain customer satisfaction and
profitable functioning. One method of developing utilization strategies is to make
use of the simulation modelling. With Simulation, one can easily evaluate the
system under different scenarios. Using the software Arena, a simulation model
can be created to replicate the characteristics and activities of fitness center and
swimming pool. This allows the management to make correct decisions regarding
the allocation of resources. An ideal model can also proposed based on number of
resources which can be up to their optimum utilization.

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Data Collection
The data collection mainly involved recording number of students per hour and
time they spent using the resources in Swimming Pool and Fitness Center.
However, I have restricted myself to only few equipment in the Fitness Center
namely Treadmills, Elliptical Trainers and Bikes to simplify the model and capture
every scenario as in real world.

For arrival rates, I collected the data on three different days at five different
timings. I extrapolated the data using statistical measures (mean and standard
deviation) for a week and calculated the average. For this project, I used nonstationary Poisson process to create the entity arrivals. The reason behind choosing
this type of schedule is to capture the varying arrival rates as in the real- world
scenario. As we usually notice, there are certain peak timings in which people
prefer to go for work out or a swim.

Timings:
Fitness Center: 6 AM- 10 AM, 16 hours
Swimming Pool: 6 AM- 8 PM, 14 hours
Recreation Center usually operates at different timings during different days of the
week. But for the scope of this simulation which is only one day, I considered most
common timings among them.

Fitting Distributions for Wait times:

The data collected for wait times have been fitted into a distribution using Input
Analyzer tool in Arena. Best fit was observed to be triangular distribution.

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Wait times in Fitness Center:

Figure 1. Triangular distribution observed in Input Analyzer for Fitness Center Wait times

Wait times in Swimming Pool:

Figure 2. Triangular distribution observed in Input Analyzer for Swimming Pool Wait times

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Challenges Faced:
Due to time constraint, the amount of data collected is not really sufficient.
The data collected might not be the exact representative of the real world
scenario as there are many factors which affect arrival rates like bad weather
conditions, holidays etc.

Assumptions:
As the data is only collected at four different timings of a day, it is assumed
that those are representative of the certain hours before and after that
specific timing. This assumption does seem intuitive because of entity
characteristics i.e. student. As students tends to work out more in a specific
timings of the day due to schedule constraints.
It is assumed that the scheduled arrival rate is representative of all the days
in a week, which might not be the case. Weekdays and Weekends usually
have different arrival rates. In my data collection process, I collected data on
2 Weekdays and 1 Weekend. So, this might capture the total essence to some
extent.

In real-world, most of the scenarios are based on decision making. E.g.

choosing a lane in the swimming pool (or) equipment in the fitness center.
So based on the amount of data collected, it is difficult to come up with an
exact percentage of choosing an option in a scenario. So based on my
limited observations and from a sense of human mentality, some decision
percentages are assumed.

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Fitness Center Model

For the scope of this project, I have limited myself to only three equipment namely
Treadmills, Elliptical Trainers and Bikes. This is because it gives a flexibility to
capture the complex behavior of the system as closely as possible.
Basic Model
Basic Structure:
Students arrive. They chose one work out from the 3 available work outs. If
the resource is available, they seize the resource immediately or else wait.
Student spends approximately 10-15 minutes in each workout. After the first
work out they may or may not go for second and third workouts.
Then process repeats, and student leaves after certain time.
Queuing is avoided in the updated model because in real- world that never really
happens. Moreover, entities are divided into Male and Female. Decision percentages
and arrival rates are kept different to capture reality. If an equipment is not available,
the person tend to choose another work out.
Key parts in Modelling:
Modelling the choice of work out is key in this simulation. As a student has
to choose a work out from different work outs (which he hasnt done before).
Repeating work out never really happens in reality. Using the Modulus
function we can achieve this.

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Figure 3. Assign Module to choose second and third workout dependently

Updated Model- More Realistic

In the above model, the entities might experience some queue during peak timings.
Queuing is avoided in the updated model because in real- world that never really
happens. If an equipment is not available, the person tend to choose another work
out. Moreover, entities are divided into Male and Female. Decision percentages
and arrival rates are kept different according to gender to capture reality. This is
because Female students are more likely to spend time in this area of Fitness center
compare to male students.

Changes made:
Different arrival schedules are created for Male and Female Students. It is
observed that distribution is 60:40 Female to male.
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 Students check if resource is available. If not, they skip and move on to next
work out. They may or may not come back for again work out. The number
of such students leaving is recorded.

Fitness Center-Final Model:

Figure 4. Fitness Center- Updated Model in Arena

Swimming Pool
Basic Structure:

Students arrive. Initial delay of 1 minute for certain activities. If the lane is
empty, they seize the resource immediately. But if there is someone already
in the pool, they may or may not share the lane. If not sharing, then he/she
waits for an empty lane.
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 Student spends about approximately 20 minutes in the pool and then leaves
swim.
Key Parts in Modelling:
The concept of sharing the lane and waiting for an empty lane. This can be
achieved using Hold Module with Scan for condition option.

Figure 5. Hold Module to wait for empty lane

Final Model Swimming Pool

Figure 6. Swimming Pool Model in Arena

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Output Analysis
Fitness Center
At present, there are 36 Elliptical trainers, 24 bikes and 30 Treadmills in the
Fitness Center.

For Basic Model (with queue),

The scheduled utilization of these equipments is found to be very low. Even if

there was a possibility of queue, there was no wait time for the entity at all. So
analyzing individual queue doesnt make any sense.

For Updated Model (without any queue)

The updated model almost mimics the real-world scenario. In this case the
scheduled utilization was found to be very less. Moreover, even the students
leaving is found to be zero.

So this does not seems to be the best case. There is hardly any utilization of the
resources. So it seems like recreation center is spending too much on the facilities
which are not up to its optimum utilization.
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Analyzing the Updated Model using Process Analyzer:

Figure 7. Different scenarios analyzed in Process Analyzer

I have analyzed different scenarios using Process Analyzer. Management can make
decisions keeping in mind two factors:
- Increased resource utilization,
- With not much increase in students skipping exercise due to non-availability
I tried changing the values of number of equipments and analyzed the utilizations
and skipping counters.

As in Scenario 4, we found the maximum utilization among the other scenarios but
the number of students leaving due to non-availability of equipment has increased.
So it is not a good sign. We can observe a utilization-No. Of students leaving
trade-off. So we can see that Scenario 6 which has almost half of the resources
when compared to present scenario, seemed to have almost doubled utilization. In
addition, the students leaving are even less. So around 30 students skipping
exercise due to resource non-availability is not a big concern to worry about.
But this utilization-No. Of students leaving trade-off is subjective, and one that
management can setup according to their decision. So PAN provides us this
flexibility to analyze different scenario and choose the best one among them.

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Figure 7. Box-Whisker plot in Process Analyzer showing statistical significance of utilizations across
different models

We can see that Scenario 6 is better than Present Scenario in terms of Scheduled
utilization of the resources. But is it statistically significant? Yes, from the boxwhisker plot.
According to PAN, Red scenarios are statistically significantly better than blues.
95% vertical confidence interval of utilization of each scenario is shown in the
picture.
The 95% confidence interval of Utilization in of Scenario 6 doesnt overlap with
that of Present scenario in any resource. This gives us a reasonable idea that both
are very different and supports our PAN results.

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Swimming Pool
At present, there are 6 beginner lanes and 10 expert lanes, in which each lane may
or may not be shared.

From the above results, we can see that even when the utilization is very low, there
is some queue which is observed. The waiting time for an empty lane is varying
from 3.14 minutes to 21.47 minutes with an average of 5.41. This is the case when
there is sharing of the lane which is not a best way to defend ourselves. So if the
concept of sharing is not considered (or) with increase in arrival rates, then
students may have to wait for longer time to get an empty lane. Moreover, we can
see that utilization of Expert swimming lanes is around 0.1218 which is very low.
These lanes are used for competitions, so it makes sense to have more-thanrequired quantity.

But management might want to take the empty lane queueing into consideration
and increase the beginner lanes to provide more student- satisfaction. The model
built is not a generalized one as we cannot vary the number of resources, analyzing
output in Process Analyzer is not possible.

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Conclusion
The current utilization of the resources in Fitness Center is very low. Even
with an allocation of half of the resources of that in present scenario, the
utilization is around 0.5, which is almost 100% increment. So there is need
for management to make decision regarding the same to maximize
utilization and increase profitability keeping in mind student- satisfaction
(Utilization- student leaving trade-off)
Even with the concept of sharing of the lane, which is not a usual thing,
there is some queue observed to get an empty lane. This might turn into
longer waiting times with increased arrival rates. So management might
have to consider the same and take a step towards allocating more beginner
lanes.

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References
1. Simulation with Arena, 6th Edition, W. David Kelton , Randall Sadowski,
Nancy Zupick

2. Use of Simulation Modeling in Sport Facility Resource Utilization, Kevin

Cross, The College at Brockport

3. Simulation Modeling and Analysis with Arena, Tayfur Altiok, Benjamin

Melamid

4. The 25 Most Amazing Campus Student Recreation Centers,

www.bestcollegereviews.org

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