Supply Chain Building Blocks - Development of an Agent-Based Platform for Generic Supply Chain Modeling

The aim of this paper is to present the development of an agent-simulation named Supply Chain Building Blocks (SCBB) and to position it as a platform for generic supply chain modeling and holistic performance assessment. Complementing existent supply chain agent-simulation frameworks, mainly focused on partial analyses and not on the complete system, SCBB abstracts the supply chain across its system structural levels: network, interactions and processes. Supply chain participants are modeled as agents with configurable processes and policies, which interact and communicate within the supply chain environment. The agent's processes are aligned with the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) framework and the sub-processes with the supply chain management inter-functional perspective. The platform integrates geographical information for emulating realistic transportation lead times between globally located supply chain participants. In the model, lead times affect the decisions of inventory, production-management and procurement sub-processes. SCBB enables simulating supply chains with different network configurations, participants' characteristics and process parameters for the performance analysis across the system's structural levels. Thus, SCBB agent-based modeling platform supports the supply chain stakeholder's decision-making process by holistically analyzing the performance of generic supply chains characterized by different structural designs and behaviors.