Title: An XML-centred approach to creating object-oriented supply chain simulation models

Authors: Dean C. Chatfield, Terry P. Harrison, Jack C. Hayya

Addresses: Department of Business Information Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA. ' Department of Supply Chain and Information Systems, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. ' Department of Supply Chain and Information Systems, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

Abstract: We propose an eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-centred approach to object-oriented simulation modelling of supply chains. Our approach is fundamentally different from previous work in that it uses XML to describe the supply chain itself, as opposed to using XML to store the simulation model. We define a system that includes an XML-based markup language and a |simulator| that contains a library of fundamental supply chain simulation classes and a simulation |model mapper|. The simulator processes the supply chain description document and generates an object-oriented simulation model using the class library. We detail working reference implementations of the markup language (Supply Chain Modelling Language (SCML)) and the simulator (Simulator for Integrated Supply Chain Operations (SISCO)).

Keywords: eXtensible Markup Language; XML; simulation; supply chains; markup language; component based simulation; supply chain modelling language; SCML; simulator for integrated supply chain operations; SISCO; supply chain operations reference; SCOR; supply chain management; SCM; object-oriented simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSPM.2006.012640

International Journal of Simulation and Process Modelling, 2006 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.115 - 123

Published online: 05 Mar 2007 *

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