Real-Time Inter-Enterprise Coordination in a Highly Dynamic World
Alexander Verbraeck
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Abstract: Because of the relatively low cost of intercontinental transportation, activities take place in those parts of the
world that either have cheap labor, or specialize in certain types of value adding activities. This causes supply
chains and transport networks to grow in complexity, and makes them more and more vulnerable to dynamics
and disruptions. Disasters like the flooding in Thailand a few years ago or the Fukushima tsunami, caused
critical component stock-outs for the world market, disrupting thousands of supply chains across the planet.
Coordination principles and information exchange have not adapted to the high volatility of today's enterprise
networks, and risk assessment is not a standard tool in supply chain setup and inter-organizational information
systems design. Yet, we all expect that sensor data and real-time coordination and control would be present
to immediately address the problems that occur, and steer the complex systems to a stable state again.
Unfortunately, current systems practices are often unable to utilize the real-time information and deal with
the dynamics inherent to the overall system. The presentation will focus on these issues and will provide
potential solutions using a modeling perspective.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Alexander Verbraeck (MSc in applied mathematics
1987 (cum laude); PhD in logistics 1991), is a full
professor at Delft University of Technology, Faculty
of Technology, Policy and Management, Policy
Analysis Department. His research focuses on
modeling and simulation, especially in heavily
distributed environments and using real-time data.
Examples of research on these types of simulations
are real-time decision making, interactive gaming
using simulations, and the use of 3D virtual and
augmented reality environments in simulations for
training. The major application domains for research
are logistics and transportation, and safety and
security. He is a member of ACM, IEEE, SCS, and
INFORMS, and a Fellow in the Research School
TRAIL for Transport, Infrastructure and Logistics. In
addition Alexander has a position as adjunct professor
at the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University
of Maryland, USA. Here, he applies the modeling and
simulation research for studying real-time supply
chains.
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Seventh International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design
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