A General Simulation Framework for Supply Chain Modeling: State of the Art and Case Study

TL;DR

This paper reviews current discrete event simulation tools for supply chains and introduces a new C++ based simulator, SCOPS, for analyzing inventory management across various supply chain scenarios.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of existing simulation software and presents a novel, flexible C++ framework for supply chain modeling and analysis.

Findings

SCOPS enables detailed supply chain scenario analysis.

The paper highlights limitations of commercial simulation tools.

The framework supports complex inventory management studies.

Abstract

Nowadays there is a large availability of discrete event simulation software that can be easily used in different domains: from industry to supply chain, from healthcare to business management, from training to complex systems design. Simulation engines of commercial discrete event simulation software use specific rules and logics for simulation time and events management. Difficulties and limitations come up when commercial discrete event simulation software are used for modeling complex real world-systems (i.e. supply chains, industrial plants). The objective of this paper is twofold: first a state of the art on commercial discrete event simulation software and an overview on discrete event simulation models development by using general purpose programming languages are presented; then a Supply Chain Order Performance Simulator (SCOPS, developed in C++) for investigating the inventory management problem along the supply chain under different supply chain scenarios is proposed to readers.