Design and development of a prototype distributed simulation for evaluation of supply chains

In this paper, a prototype distributed simulation system is proposed to evaluate viability of a simulated supply chain. Members of a supply chain, activity definitions for each member, and information and material flow among members are discussed. IDEF∅ functional modeling tool has been used to model the functions of the system and the relationships among the functions. The interaction between the members of the system is then illustrated using time-sequence diagrams, and the behavior of each member is represented using the deterministic finite state automata. These formal models have formed the basis for the development of the distributed simulation system. Reusable simulation models for each of the members of the system have been developed using commercial simulation tools such as Arena™ and ProModel™. The High Level Architecture (HLA) Run Time Infrastructure (RTI) has been used to provide an interface to create the distributed simulation system. Preliminary performance tests have been conducted to evaluate the suitability of the proposed system in the Internet environment. Significance: This paper addresses the application of distributed simulation technology to evaluation of potential supply chains. The use of distributed simulation technology allows each potential partner to hide any proprietary information in the implementation of the individual simulation, but still provide enough information to evaluate the supply chain as a whole.