Supply Chain Management models for Industrial Districts: an Agent-Based Simulation study

Abstract

This paper addresses Supply Chain Management (SCM) within Industrial Districts (IDs). This topic is becoming more and more important due to the increase of global competition that forces ID firms to adopt more efficient and effective models and techniques for the management of the material and information flows from the source of supply to the final customer. Even though SCM is a critical process in IDs, the related literature has not devoted much attention to this issue. Therefore, there is an increasing need to develop managerial policies appropriate to the Supply Chains (SCs) within IDs. To this aim, we develop an Agent-Based Model of ID's SCs and we carry out a simulation analysis, by using the software NetLogo, aimed at assessing the efficiency/efficacy of alternative SCM models for ID's SCs (i.e. the choice of supply strategy, supply policy and supplier selection criteria).