Agent based modeling and simulation framework for supply chain risk management

This research develops a flexible agent based modeling and simulation (ABMS) framework for supply chain risk management with significant enhancements to standard ABMS methods integrated with software agents and extended supply chain risk modeling. Our framework provides Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) with a scalable modeling approach to more efficiently capture supply chain performance and risks. We begin with the use of software agents to gather and process input data for use in our simulation model. For our simulation model we extend an existing mathematical framework for discrete event simulation (DES) to ABMS and then implement the concepts of variable resolution modeling from the DES domain to ABMS and provide further guidelines for aggregation and disaggregation of supply chain models. Existing supply chain risk management research focuses on consumable item supply chains. Since the AF supply chain contains many reparable items, we fill this gap with our risk metrics framework designed specifically for the greater complexity of reparable item supply chains. We present new metrics along with existing metrics, in a framework for reparable item supply chain risk management and discuss aggregation and disaggregation of metrics for use with our variable resolution modeling.