Dimensioning the Supply Chain Decision Support Systems

Resum

Supply chain management has gained a strategic importance in recent years because rivalry is moving from “firm vs. firm” to “supply chain vs. supply chain”. Hence, supply chain key actors are facing extremely hard decision-making because of riskmanagement, inventorymanagement, ethical procurement, total cost, and service challenges, among other major concerns. In this work, we propose a methodology to design appropriate decision support systems for dealing with the said issues. Organizational cybernetics offers a series of components that are very useful to device key points so to experiment decision-making based upon simulation tools. The implementation of the supply chain model through Petri nets and multiagents systems empowers the managers to increase the probability of making the right decisions in a bid to increase the supply chain viability over time. The work also shows a case study in which a decision support system has been implemented for the well-known Beer Game scenario. The interface of the developed prototype includes the parameter configuration area, the Colored Petri net and a monitoring board with the most relevant key performance indicators for the managers.