Modeling supply chain based on multi-agent system

Now supply chain management and optimization are becoming the focus for enterprises to improve their comprehensive competitive ability. However, as a typical dynamic complex system, the supply chain imposes great difficulty on traditional modeling theories and approaches. The autonomy of an agent and the coordination mechanism based on message-passing make a multi-agent system (MAS) a promising tool to model complex systems. We first introduce the concept of an agent, and then describe the structure, dependencies and coordination mechanism of a general MAS in an analytical form. Finally, the structure, dependencies and control in a supply chain are discussed based on its constituent elements, and a framework and approach of modeling a supply chain based on a MAS are proposed