Scalable Enterprise Systems Phase II: Supply Chain Optimization and Protocol Environment (SCOPE) - A Rapid Prototyping and Modeling Tool for Extended Enterprises

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The objective of this Phase II Scalable Enterprise Systems project is to develop a Supply Chain Optimization and Protocol Environment that emulates the behavior of supply chains involving multiple, independent, goal-seeking entities over time. Entities will be represented by novel optimization models that capture the key decision variables and technological constraints, while retaining enough special structure to allow efficient solution. Interactions among entities will be described through protocols that specify what goods, money, and information pass among entities, in what order entities make decisions, how information is processed by each entity to make its decisions, and how entities respond to unforeseen events that do not match their plans. The approach will allow users to represent a range of different modes of interaction among entities in the supply chain, which, although simplified relative to industrial practice, should provide insights into many cases of practical interest. By focusing on the policy level of analysis, it provides sufficient granularity for evaluating high-value supply chain opportunities, and assessing the associated risks, unencumbered by the transactional detail of existing modeling systems. If successful, this project would provide managers with a tool for rapid prototyping of supply chain proposals that would permit them to evaluate possibilities without either implementing an untested idea or waiting for competitors to do it and risking loss of market share. Researchers would be provided a test bed for assessing how well theoretically derived results generalize to different modes of operation that strain some of the original assumptions, and for experimenting with forms of supply chain collaboration too complex for treatment analytically. Educators will be able to explore realistic cases with students by varying model parameters and displaying the results in near real time.