Design And Development Of An Intelligent Agent-Based Supply Chain Simulation System

An intelligent agent-based supply chain simulation model, in which each enterprise/consumer is represented by an agent, is designed. There are six layers in this supply chain simulation model: raw material providers, component manufacturers, product assemblers, product holders, retailers, and final customers. Each entity in the supply chain represented by an agent has five components: interface, task distribution, business processing activities, knowledge management and decision support, and information storage. A detailed agent structure is designed and various functions of an agent including communication among agents are described. Issues in the supply chain integration, information sharing among supply chain partners, demand forecasting, supply chain risk management, and automated communication and negotiation, could be simulated and studied by using the proposed system. Based on the proposed supply chain simulation model, a generic six-layer prototype mobile phone supply chain simulation system is designed, developed and implemented. The system allows a user to setup and adjust a large number of parameters, including (1) simulation period, loan and saving interest rates; (2) customers' behavior and market demand; (3) each retailer's initial cash, loan, market share, inventories, Order Amount Policy and Order Point Strategy; (4) each product holder's initial cash, loan, market share, inventories, Order Amount Policy, Order Point Strategy and inventory strategy; (5) each assembler's and component agent's initial cash, loan, inventories, Order Amount Policy, Order Point Strategy, production strategy, and production capacities; and (6) each material provider's initial cash, loan, inventory, production strategy, and production capacities. Extensive simulation studies are carried out to examine and compare many supply chain management strategies and agent behaviors. This system can be used to test which strategy is most suitable in certain environments, The generic supply chain simulation system developed can be used in a number of ways, including: as an analysis tool for entity in a supply chain from the entity's perspective; as a tool for studying supply chain coordination and integration from the perspective of an entire supply chain, or portion of it; as a tool to design supply chains by answering "what-if" questions.