A novel combined approach for supply chain modeling and analysis

F.D. MELE; C.A. MÉNDEZ; A. ESPUÑA; L. PUIGJANER

Computer-Aided Chemical Engineering, 21B

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Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2006; p. 2207 - 2212

The framework here presented consists in representing the supply chain (SC) network of a company by means of a multi agent-based simulation model, which mimics the system dynamics responding to  uncertainties through local dispatching rules, invoking when necessary local optimization modules, and solving conflicts through message exchange. The simulator involves a number of independent and well-defined agents, each of them modeling an entity or node of the real-world SC. A central agent coordinates the global operation of the system. The hybrid approach proposed in this work offers the advantages of the multi-agent system to model the SC together with the optimization capabilities of local not so large mathematical programming models to solve in an efficient manner the decision problems that the central agent faces along one simulation run. The results so far obtained are very promising.