A Grammar-Based Process Modeling and Simulation Methodology for Supply Chain Management

Abstract

In order to respond to customer demands, supply chains must be rapidly reconfigured and evaluated. This has given rise to supply chain simulation as an important tool to aid in the evaluation of supply chain configurations. Part of the reconfigurations involved designing and redesigning business processes. Hence, business process simulation is an integral part of supply chain simulation. Supply chain simulation models are usually large-scale complex models. It is thus usual for the simulation experts to get overwhelmed with the simulation process itself. This paper intends to propose a methodology, combining two approaches (i.e. grammar-based business process modeling and simulation) to facilitate process thinking (reengineering). This methodology bridges the gap between business process modeling and simulation by providing the grammatical approach. This paper presents a novel approach to design business processes based on grammar-based process modeling, event-driven process chains (EPC) and discrete event simulation. This paper illustrates that the grammar-based process modeling approach is applicable to the simulation of dynamic systems such as supply chains as well as representing detailed description of the processes and events. More detailed and advanced analysis, and discussions will be reported in future papers.