Cooperative environment for training on SCM

This paper presents an environment to enable the training of supply chain (SC) managers so they can effectively act in SC distributed decision making processes. It will be used to aid managers to acquire a cooperative management mindset. The environment assumes that cooperation on SC context can be made concrete through information sharing and bases training on the learning by doing paradigm. It will support comparative analysis of supply chain performance based on diverse information sharing models. This approach will enable the setting of collaborative practices inside the SC (and among the managers) through the use of proposed governance rules, extracted from a repository previously developed or from best practices memorized while using the environment. Ontologies will be used to express governance rules, establish uniform vocabulary and make the environment extensible. A simulation tool based on multi-agents systems (MAS) will be embedded into the environment permitting to execute different experiments, visualize results and select best tactics. The environment mimics managers daily experience, hides technical details and provides a SC abstract view that shows SC structure and selected indicators