Abstract: The optimization of supply chain architecture is essential for sustainability among industries. Dynamic evolutionary events such as natural disasters, pandemics, terrorism attacks, political unrest, and cyberattacks have severe implications that disrupt the operations incurred by an unplanned event or attack and economic losses that reduce the agility and resilience of supply chains. Organizing initial inventory stock to meet uncertain customer demand is a primary action to counteract uncertainties during the onset of the crisis. Traditional supply chain models may not be effective enough considering past order and demand patterns, incorporate time-dependent fixed-up and shut-down costs, and respond slowly toward uncertain demand due to dissemination issues. Cloud computing, sensor, and network technologies, and distributed intelligent systems provide a universal and economical information and communication technology infrastructure for supply chain entities to share supply chain information, big data analytics, decision support tools, and systems through the Internet regardless of time and place. This innovative approach leads to create a consolidated Virtual Supply Chain (VSC) based on cloud models that associates and connects, in a dynamic fashion, any supply chain entity capable of storing, sharing, and processing information to support multiagent, collaborative, ubiquitous, instantaneous decision-making and recommending answers. The use of advanced cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and data analytics technologies provides the supply chain actors with capabilities of forecasting demand, managing risks, and optimizing supply chain design, planning, and operations in a collaborative, efficient, aligned, responsive, resilient approach. Considering that customers have become the driving agents and have the power to make a difference concerning final demand, this chapter proposes a demand perspective for modeling, optimizing, and managing the VSC by developing an advanced commercial agent-based simulation model.
Keywords: Supply Chain Optimization, Virtual Supply Chain, Cloud Computing, Internet Of Things, Data Analytics, Demand Forecasting, Supply Chain Resilience, Risk Management, Inventory Management, Agent-Based Simulation, Distributed Intelligent Systems, Big Data Analytics, Collaborative Decision-Making, Ubiquitous Computing, Crisis Response, Real-Time Information Sharing, Supply Chain Disruptions, Dynamic Supply Chain Design, Customer-Driven Demand, Multiagent Systems
Copyright Form