Advanced Look-ahead Based Approach (ALBA) for distributed simulation of supply chains

Distributed simulation is an emerging technique for simulation of supply chains consisting of multiple independent detailed discrete-event models. Time synchronization is one of the critical issues that affect the accuracy of results, network load and execution time. An advanced look-ahead based approach (ALBA), a hybrid conservative approach for time synchronization, is proposed that allows the models to run as-fast-as-possible to the nearest interaction event. This is achieved using an improved supply chain domain specific look-ahead algorithm that handles multiple types of interactions. The effect of stochasticity of the models on the performance of the look-ahead algorithm is discussed. Also, the performance of ALBA is appraised against two other hybrid time synchronization approaches in literature. Experimental results using a four player distributed supply chain simulation show that ALBA functions better than the other approaches in terms of network communication load and execution time.