Developing an Object Exchange Model Template for GRIDS distributed supply chain simulations

Supply chain management (SCM) is a series of activities, usually sequential, that an organisation, or a network of organisations, uses to deliver products and/or services to customers. With the globalisation of commercial markets, distributed supply chain (DSQ) simulation, connecting organisations from various parts of the world, has gained significance in supply chain management decision support. DSC simulation requires that information be transferred between individual simulations (interoperability) in a timely and consistent manner. In this work GRIDS (Generic Runtime Infrastructure for Distributed Simulation), an extensible, service-based RTI, is used to successfully transfer timely information between simulations. However, the question of what format this information should take still remains. This paper presents the development of an Object Exchange Model Template (OEMT), for DSC simulation in GRIDS. These are templates for standard object creation within a DSC simulation, so as to facilitate standard object transfers between the various simulations that compose a DSC simulation. The templates are stored in an Object Exchange Model Repository (OEMR) for easy access by all simulation builders intending to build a DSC simulation using GRIDS. The OEMT facilitates interoperability by providing a common "language" that can be used to share information (objects) between simulations. This approach can also facilitate data distribution management (DDM) services. The OEMT is intended to extend and complement the OMT of the High Level Architecture.