Page 1 IMPACTS OF SHARING PRODUCTION INFORMATION ON SUPPLY CHAIN DYNAMICS: A MULTI-AGENT SIMULATION STUDY

Information sharing and coordination between buyers and vendors have been considered as useful strategies to improve supply chain performance. Some researches, however, have reported that not all players in a supply chain are benefited under such strategies. Therefore, the debate is not about whether or not production information should be shared in the supply chain, but about what information to share and how to share most cost-effectively to maximize the mutual benefits of the supply chain as a whole and the individual business players. In this paper a multi-agent simulation model is developed to investigate the issue. The multiagent model supports more comprehensive and flexible modeling capability than traditional modeling approach. Several experiments are designed and conducted to investigate the impacts of different levels of inter-agent cooperation and information sharing between supply chain partners on various performance indicators