Ideas for modeling and simulation of supply chains with arena

This paper presents a research project being developed at the Industrial and Systems Engineering Graduate Program at the Catholic University of Parana (Brazil). The objective is to develop a system to aid professionals from management and logistics areas to evaluate the performance of supply chains through computer simulation. Among the several possibilities for analysis, simulation can allow one to perform detailed studies on the bullwhip effect in supply chains, caused by the demand variation from the point-of-sale to the suppliers. Two performance measures are of particular interest: average inventory level and service level, both for each stage at and for the whole supply chain. The structure considered in this project is the traditional supply chain composed by suppliers, manufactures, distributors (or wholesalers), retailers and customers. A first version of the proposed arena simulation models is under development and is presented in this paper.