Multi-agent modelling for replenishment policies simulation in supply chains

In recent days, the industrial sector is characterised by saturated worldwide target markets and high expectations of the consumers. This new context subjects the company to a great deal of pressure. Therefore, companies try to optimise their supply chains in order to improve their competitiveness. Many approaches and techniques were developed over the last decades to help the design, control, synchronisation, and collaboration within supply chains. In this work, we propose, based on multi-agent systems, a generic model of software agent to model supply chains in order to simulate and evaluate replenishment policies within these chains. To validate the proposed model, we present an implementation of the supply chain based on the beer game, and we simulate some replenishment policies. [Received 30 September 2008; Revised 25 May 2009; Accepted 6 December 2009]