Modeling and simulation agile supply chain - Using multi-agent technology

A Supply chain (SC) comprises geographically dispersed facilities where raw materials, intermediate, products or finished products acquired, transformed, stored, or sold and transportation links that connect members(enterprises) along which products flow. One of the most important characteristics of an agile supply chain (ASC) is to reconfigure dynamically and response quickly according to the demand change of the market. In this paper, the similarities between ASC and multi-agent system (MAS) are analyzed and the multi-agent technology is used to support the modeling and simulating of an agile supply chain. A approach based on mutli-agent to model and simulate an agile supply chain is presented. At last a simulating instance interpret the forming process of the supply chain through the contract net protocol.