Modeling supply chain dynamics: A multiagent approach

A global economy and increase in customer expectations in terms of cost and services have put a premium on effective supply chain reengineering. It is essential to perform risk-benefit analysis of reengineering alternatives b efore making a final decision. Simulation provides an effective pragmatic a pproach to detailed analysis and evaluation of supply chain design and mana gement alternatives. However, the utility of this methodology is hampered b y the time and effort required to develop models with sufficient fidelity t o the actual supply chain of interest. In this paper, we describe a supply chain modeling framework designed to overcome this difficulty. Using our ap proach, supply chain models are composed from software components that repr esent types of supply chain agents (e.g., retailers, manufacturers, transpo rters), their constituent control elements (e.g., inventory policy), and th eir interaction protocols (e.g., message types). The underlying library of supply chain modeling components has been derived from analysis of several different supply chains. It provides a reusable base of domain specific pri mitives that enables rapid development of customized decision support tools .