Simphony Supply Chain Simulator: a simulation toolkit to model the supply chain of construction projects

摘要

The supply chain management (SCM) field of research has developed a valuable set of concepts and strategies to incorporate the core competencies of suppliers into industrial systems, a trend followed by the construction industry. Research into quantifying the benefits of implementing SCM in construction has been very limited; the literature for the construction industry generally discusses how SCM concepts can be adopted, or what problems and challenges inhibit such adoption, without analyzing and quantifying the effects of these techniques on an actual construction project. No analytical approach or special-purpose simulation tool has yet been developed to facilitate such quantitative analysis for construction projects. This paper presents a construction supply chain simulation toolkit that is capable of modeling different supply chain problems and is compatible with other construction simulation tools. A detailed simulation model of the effects of supply chain issues on the productivity of a real-life construction project, constructed using this toolkit, is also presented.