26,345 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Multi agent system for negotiation in supply chain management
Supply chain management (SCM) is an emerging field that has commanded attention and support from the industrial community. Supply chain (SC) is defined as the chain linking each entity of the manufacturing and supply process from raw materials through to the end user. In order to increase supply chain effectiveness, minimize total cost, and reduce the bullwhip effect, integration and coordination of different systems and processes in the supply chain are required using information technology and effective communication and negotiation mechanism. To solve this problem, Agent technology provides the distributed environment a great promise of effective communication. The agent technology facilitates the integration of the entire supply chain as a networked system of independent echelon. In this article, a multi agent system has been developed to simulate a multi echelon supply chain. Each entity is modeled as one agent and their coordination lead to control inventories and minimize the total cost of SC by sharing information and forecasting knowledge and using negotiation mechanism. The result showed a reasonable reduction in total cost and bullwhip effect
Abridged Petri Nets
A new graphical framework, Abridged Petri Nets (APNs) is introduced for
bottom-up modeling of complex stochastic systems. APNs are similar to
Stochastic Petri Nets (SPNs) in as much as they both rely on component-based
representation of system state space, in contrast to Markov chains that
explicitly model the states of an entire system. In both frameworks, so-called
tokens (denoted as small circles) represent individual entities comprising the
system; however, SPN graphs contain two distinct types of nodes (called places
and transitions) with transitions serving the purpose of routing tokens among
places. As a result, a pair of place nodes in SPNs can be linked to each other
only via a transient stop, a transition node. In contrast, APN graphs link
place nodes directly by arcs (transitions), similar to state space diagrams for
Markov chains, and separate transition nodes are not needed.
Tokens in APN are distinct and have labels that can assume both discrete
values ("colors") and continuous values ("ages"), both of which can change
during simulation. Component interactions are modeled in APNs using triggers,
which are either inhibitors or enablers (the inhibitors' opposites).
Hierarchical construction of APNs rely on using stacks (layers) of submodels
with automatically matching color policies. As a result, APNs provide at least
the same modeling power as SPNs, but, as demonstrated by means of several
examples, the resulting models are often more compact and transparent,
therefore facilitating more efficient performance evaluation of complex
systems.Comment: 17 figure
Recommended from our members
Comparing conventional and distributed approaches to simulation in complex supply-chain health systems
Decision making in modern supply chains can be extremely daunting due to their complex nature. Discrete-event simulation is a technique that can support decision making by providing what-if analysis and evaluation of quantitative data. However, modelling supply chain systems can result in massively large and complicated models that can take a very long time to run even with today's powerful desktop computers. Distributed simulation has been suggested as a possible solution to this problem, by enabling the use of multiple computers to run models. To investigate this claim, this paper presents experiences in implementing a simulation model with a 'conventional' approach and with a distributed approach. This study takes place in a healthcare setting, the supply chain of blood from donor to recipient. The study compares conventional and distributed model execution times of a supply chain model simulated in the simulation package Simul8. The results show that the execution time of the conventional approach increases almost linearly with the size of the system and also the simulation run period. However, the distributed approach to this problem follows a more linear distribution of the execution time in terms of system size and run time and appears to offer a practical alternative. On the basis of this, the paper concludes that distributed simulation can be successfully applied in certain situations
Recommended from our members
The boomerang returns? Accounting for the impact of uncertainties on the dynamics of remanufacturing systems
Recent years have witnessed companies abandon traditional open-loop supply chain structures in favour of closed-loop variants, in a bid to mitigate environmental impacts and exploit economic opportunities. Central to the closed-loop paradigm is remanufacturing: the restoration of used products to useful life. While this operational model has huge potential to extend product life-cycles, the collection and recovery processes diminish the effectiveness of existing control mechanisms for open-loop systems. We systematically review the literature in the field of closed-loop supply chain dynamics, which explores the time-varying interactions of material and information flows in the different elements of remanufacturing supply chains. We supplement this with further reviews of what we call the three âpillarsâ of such systems, i.e. forecasting, collection, and inventory and production control. This provides us with an interdisciplinary lens to investigate how a âboomerangâ effect (i.e. sale, consumption, and return processes) impacts on the behaviour of the closed-loop system and to understand how it can be controlled. To facilitate this, we contrast closed-loop supply chain dynamics research to the well-developed research in each pillar; explore how different disciplines have accommodated the supply, process, demand, and control uncertainties; and provide insights for future research on the dynamics of remanufacturing systems
- âŠ