Design of a Suite of Visual Languages for Supply Chain Specification

Supply chain modelling and simulation by SMEs (Small-to-Medium Enterprises) is a challenging problem. This is due both to complexity of the supply chain models required and the lack of required expertise among the SMEs. The problem is important since SMEs need to represent and modify their evolving skills and processes to be visible in electronic marketplaces and supply chain design platforms. We demonstrate how this problem can be addressed by developing a suite of novel domain-specific visual languages and a support tool. The challenging setup of our research context motivated us to trial a new approach for the design of our visual languages and to employ a collaborative development process across our distributed research team.