Agent Based Decision Support in Manufacturing Supply Chain

摘要

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is becoming increasingly complex and an intensified competition in the end-markets has started to create a situation where co-operation requirements between companies in a Supply Chain (SC) are increasing. The old mechanistic operations management solutions are becoming obsolete and advanced decision support is increasingly needed to realize efficient and effective management of complex SCs. The objective of this research is to contribute to the understanding of how Agent Based Modeling (ABM) can advance decision making and to discuss why ABM should be regarded as method to realize Information Fusion (IF). In this research work an agent based model of SCM has been implemented in a simulation platform to provide an approach for evaluation of decision and management alternatives. Research shows that this kind of decision support system is based on IF, since it collects and fuses information from different sources into a situation image that provides effective support for human decision making.