STUDYING COORDINATION ISSUES IN DECENTRALIZED SUPPLY CHAIN THROUGH MULTI-AGENT SIMULATION

摘要

Supply chains are complex systems, and the coordination issues that deal with the relationships between the supply chain partners are highly complicated. The best solution is to use simulation to study such issues. Yet because of the highly complexity, we should adopt systematic approaches to carry out our research. This paper presents an approach for the study of coordination issues of the supply chain through multi-agent simulation. This approach takes an iterative process, begins with simple cases; then extend issues and models to study more complex cases. This paper also presents a flexible framework to support such a process.