The article examines the issue of the essence of simulation modeling. As the complexity of systems and processes across various sectors continues to grow, the ability to construct accurate and effective simulation models becomes increasingly important. Understanding the key stages of building an imitative model is crucial for ensuring the model's validity, reliability, and relevance to real-world scenarios. These stages typically involve problem definition, data collection and analysis, model design, validation, and implementation. Each stage requires careful planning, expertise, and attention to detail to ensure that the model accurately represents the system being studied. In today's fast-paced and competitive environment, organizations and decision-makers rely on simulation models to analyze complex scenarios, evaluate strategies, and make informed decisions. Therefore, having a clear understanding of the key stages of model building is essential for leveraging simulation modeling effectively as a decision-making tool. Furthermore, advancements in computational technologies and software tools have made it easier than ever to build complex simulation models. However, this also introduces challenges related to data quality, model complexity, and validation. Thus, knowledge of the key stages of building an imitative model is crucial for addressing these challenges and ensuring the model's accuracy and reliability. It is noted that the advantages of simulation modeling include the high adequacy of the model to the physical properties of the object, the possibility of a detailed description of complex systems, the research area that exceeds the capabilities of analytical modeling, the absence of restrictions on the display of dependencies in the model, the possibility of evaluating the functioning of the system in different modes, as well as obtaining extensive information about the object. It is emphasized that the sequence of building a simulation model involves the following steps: definition of the problem and its analysis; determination of information requirements; information gathering; proposing hypotheses and accepting assumptions; establishment of the main content of the model; determination of parameters, variables and efficiency criteria; description of the conceptual model and verification of its plausibility; construction of a logical structural diagram (block diagram).