Data-driven Simulation of the Extended Enterprise

With the ever-increasing complexity and dynamics of supply chains in an extended enterprise, simulation has become a powerful tool to assess supply performance. In traditional simulation approaches, a model is constructed by a user, who defines it step-bystep via the user interface of the simulation tool. However, if the model configuration needs to be changed, this must be carried out by a simulation expert, thus greatly limiting the usefulness of simulation to non-expert users. To resolve this, the concept of data-driven modelling/simulation has been adopted. This has been made possible by the relatively limited domain nature of a supply chain. In a data-driven simulation, the model is constructed automatically by a software program, based on data existing in company IT systems. The model created this way can be reconfigured rapidly, by changing the external data. Hence, a user could explore the implications of radical changes to a simulated extended enterprise, despite having little knowledge of the simulation software itself. A prototype data-driven extended enterprise modeller and simulation builder has been developed by the authors. This is written in Visual Basic and includes codes to generate an Access database, a supply chain data model and an Arena simulation model. The paper outlines the approach, the performance metrics adopted, and presents a case study using semi-fictional data from the European civil aerospace sector.