A Framework of Simulation for Cluster Supply Chain Collaboration

Owing to its inherent modeling flexibility, simulation is often regarded as the proper means for supporting decision making on supply chain management. The ultimate success of CSC (cluster supply chain), however, is determined by a combination of the analyst´s skills, the chain members´ involvement, and the modeling capabilities of the simulation tool. In this paper, a distributed simulation framework is presented to facilitate collaborative cluster supply chains simulation. This integrated framework is meant to construct a cross-chain simulation while hiding model details within the enterprises. This can be realized by building the simulation components as web service agents on top of the Runtime Infrastructure of the HLA (High level Architecture) and integrating simulation application on top of SOA (Web Service-Oriented Architecture).