Supply Chain Risk Management: an Interactive Simulation Model in a Big Data Context

Abstract Aligned with the Industry 4.0 research and innovation agenda, a Decision Support System is currently being developed with the purpose of enhancing decision-making in risk scenarios at Supply Chains. It is comprised of a Big Data Warehouse and a simulation model. The former stores and provides integrated real data to the simulation model, which models the respective materials and information flows. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present such tool being used to test scenarios that, contrarily to the traditional simulation approach, incorporate disruptions in an interactive way, meaning that users may fire such events at any desired simulation time and with different parameters. Thus, the tool is used to assess the impact of disruptions in the performance of the system. The conclusions of this paper highlight the benefits that can be obtained with the proposed interactive approach, as it allows a virtualization of the real system to be obtained and, at the same time, use the simulation model to assess what would be the impact of certain disruptions.