In response to the new programmatic advancements at the United Parcel Service's Worldportsm Hub, a testing tool became needed. This tool needed to be able to test functional changes to the underlying software that runs the hub and to test new physical changes made to the building, all without interfering with the active operation of the facility. The first idea that was investigated was of using an emulation tool based on the average performance rates of the hub and its various mechanical functionalities. However, as suggested by Richard Nolan in the February 2002 IIE Solutions article, Average rarely exists, "Averages can be misleading and, in fact, may never exist in reality." Since it was of the utmost importance that the testing tool designed be nothing less than a one hundred percent accurate reflection of the system, the design focus shifted to a real time simulation instead of an emulation system. From this need came the development focus of this thesis, the Sort Replay Suite (SRS).; The Sort Replay Suite software package is comprised of three applications in all. The first of these applications is a tool that collects all of the data to be used to drive the testing. This tool is called the Data Collection Manager (DCM). The second application in the SRS package is the Sortation Event Handler (SEH) which is the tool that executes all of the events in testing. The Testing Suite Manager (TSM) is the third application in the SRS. Its responsibility is to drive the SEHs and provide some final analysis and report generation capabilities.
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