A NETWORK MODELING APPROACH WITH INTERDEPENDENT AGENTS FOR NETWORK COORDINATION

Abstract

A good coordination in supply chain network can achieve competitive advantages in terms of performance and customer satisfaction. In this paper, a supply chain is modeled as a network with higher visibility and better coordination among the supply chain entities. The approach is an integration of network modeling and agent-based framework, which considers the coordination problem in supply chain network with multiple entities.A supply chain is firstly modeled as a network with a set of nodes for supply chain entities and links for interdependent connection among entities, interdependent agents arethen introduced to link and evaluate the output information from preceding entities to the input information for the succeeding entities in a supply chain network. The interdependent agents address problems of autonomy and complexity that cause changes and disruptions in supply chain network, so the proposed modeling approach can adjust any deviation as well as can maximize the coordinating performance in the network.