Supply Chain Simulation in the ECLIPS Project: Real-life Benefit

ECLIPS is a European research project extending the state-of-the-art in supply chain management. The goal of the ECLIPS project is to establish a global cost reduction in the entire supply chain in an ingenious manner, while addressing the ongoing challenges within the industry. Nowadays companies are facing ever more complex supply chains, increased portfolio diversification and shortening product life-cycles. ECLIPS is exploring custom-made solutions to these issues, in terms of concept and software. During this three-year project concepts and tooling have been developed in the first two years, while during the last project year these concepts and tools will be validated through real-life application. In order to achieve this goal ECLIPS uses simulation intensively to back up the decision making and optimization on the one hand, and as a validation for the developed tools and algorithms on the other hand. In this paper the authors focus on the real-life simulation benefits, i.e. the added value of the simulation techniques on the executive business level, the educational purpose for future end users and the surplus in what-if scenarios, as well as on a very important step in simulation before real-life implementation, i.e. the investigation of the gap between the real-life situation and the As-Is simulation results.