A multi-methodological collaborative simulation for inter-organizational supply chain networks

Inter-organizational collaborative simulation requires covering the knowledge of agent, flow and process to qualifiedly represent the supply chain network operation. This paper proposes a multi-methodological collaborative simulation framework for inter-organizational supply chain networks. This framework integrates the agent-based, flow-centric and process-oriented methodologies. This framework establishes a collaborative knowledge representation approach for simulation modeling. In the approach, a multi-agent system is adopted to represent the inter-organizational structure of a supply chain network; the three flows of material, information and time are enabled to represent the operational mechanisms; and the processes are used to represent the micro behaviors of agents. This approach integrates the knowledge of agent and process with that of flow and solves the problems regarding the integration of the agent-based, flow-centric and process-oriented methodologies. To implement the inter-organizational collaborative simulation, a collaborative framework is proposed. This framework integrates multiple simulation formalisms, such as time series increments, event scheduling, policy control, process interaction and activity scanning; it promotes the unification of the three different methodologies. A case of a five-level manufacturing supply chain network is studied using the proposed framework. The findings indicate that the proposed framework is particularly qualified in the knowledge representation of a supply chain network and is effective in implementing the inter-organizational collaborative simulation in a decentralized manner; in addition, it is well contributive to collaborative decision making through KPI analysis.