Object-oriented Simulation Modeling for Service Supply Chain

ABSTRACTRecently it is important to understand service supply chain because the economy moves from manufacturing to services. However, most of existing supply chain research focuses exclusively on the manufacturing sector. To overcome this situation, it needs to investigate and analyze service supply chain. Simulation is one of the most frequently used techniques for analysis and design of complex system. Service supply chain is complex and large systems that require an accurate designing phase. Especially, it is important to examine closely the dynamically interactive behavior of the different service supply chain components in order to predict the performance of the servcie supply chain. In this paper, we develop a conceptual model of service supply chain. Then, we present a new procedure to develop simulation model for the developed conceptual model of service supply chain, based on the UML analysis and design tools and on the ARENA simulation language. The two main characteristics of the proposed procedure are the definition of a systematic procedure to design service supply chain and of a set of rules for the conceptual model translation in an ARENA simulation language. The goal is to improve the knowledge on service supply chain management and support the simulation model development efficiency on service supply chain.