Modeling Supply Chain Dynamics: A Multiagent Approach - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University

Modeling Supply Chain Dynamics: A Multiagent Approach

Jayashankar Swaminathan, Stephen Smith, and Norman Sadeh-Koniecpol
Journal Article, Decision Sciences, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 607 - 632, July, 1998

Abstract

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 before making a final decision. Simulation provides an effective pragmatic approach to detailed analysis and evaluation of supply chain design and management alternatives. However, the utility of this methodology is hampered by the time and effort required to develop models with sufficient fidelity to the actual supply chain of interest. In this paper, we describe a supply chain modeling framework designed to overcome this difficulty. Using our approach, supply chain models are composed from software components that represent types of supply chain agents (e.g., retailers, manufacturers, transporters), their constituent control elements (e.g., inventory policy), and their 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 primitives that enables rapid development of customized decision support tools.

Notes
The authors wish to thank the associate editor and two anonymous referees whose comments have greatly improved this paper. The authors also wish to thank Dr. Chae An, Dr. Steve Buckley, and the business modeling (BPMAT) group at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center for introducing the first author to a number of issues in this domain. The authors also thank Dr. Markus Ettl, Dr. Gerry Feigin, Dr. Grace Lin, and Prof. David Yao, who primarily developed the tool for asset managers at IBM. This work was funded by an IBM Graduate Research Fellowship and support from ARPA contracts F30602–91 ‐F‐0016 and F30602–90–C‐0119.

BibTeX

@article{Swaminathan-1998-14362,
author = {Jayashankar Swaminathan and Stephen Smith and Norman Sadeh-Koniecpol},
title = {Modeling Supply Chain Dynamics: A Multiagent Approach},
journal = {Decision Sciences},
year = {1998},
month = {July},
volume = {29},
number = {3},
pages = {607 - 632},
}