A SCALABLE AGENT-BASED DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM: CASE MANUFACTURING SUPPLY CHAIN

摘要

Supply chains are complex structures and require advanced decision support systems to come up with good solutions to difficult problems. Agent-based modelling is a relatively new simulation approach but most work on the issue has been done on a conceptual level. In this paper we utilize an agent-based approach to model supply chains. The model is part of a decision support system where the user can choose to make changes to the supply chain and the model analyzes the performance of the whole system under those settings. The model has been constructed for a manufacturing company with multiple manufacturing locations and central warehouses in Europe. In this paper we show the structure of the simulation model and the decision support system, as well as analyses conducted with the decision support system. The decision support system is able to scale the simulation model to analyze different kinds supply chain solution and as such provides a good platform to estimate possible supply chain alternatives.