Integrating Knowledge Flow for Collaborative Simulation of Supply Chain Networks

In knowledge economy era, knowledge plays a significant role in promoting the performance of supply chain network (SCN) collaboration. This paper integrates knowledge flow into agent-based collaborative simulation of SCNs to improve the efficiency of traditional related studies. In this paper, a conceptual framework for this integration is presented. This framework explores the interactive mechanisms of the four dimensional flows (material, information, knowledge and time flows) in a SCN, represents the SCN as a multi-agent system plus its network space and knowledge space modeling, and supports collaborative decision making on the basis of the evolution analysis of its network system and knowledge system. An evolution solution composed of three sub solutions is adopted to simulate the evolution paths of SCNs, then supporting time series analysis of SCN evolutions. The proposed framework can be applied to different scenarios of SCNs and support decision making for their collaborative optimization.