A Tool-Independent Generalized Description for Substainable Supply Chain Design

The purpose of supply chain design is to ensure an efficient and effective logistics network. Within supply chain design, simulation and optimization tools are used in combination to improve design scenarios from different angles. Nowadays, sustainability becomes an increasingly important criterion for the evaluation of these design scenarios. To integrate ecological and economical features, an exchange of results between an optimizer and a simulation model often improves the outcomes compared to one system only. Although the communication between both systems is frequently applied, it is also error-prone as the underlying models are tool-dependent and cannot be exchanged without any adaptations. The efficient use of the simulation and optimization tools requires a holistic data model depicting the elements of the network and their dependencies. Therefore, this paper introduces a tool-independent and generalized description of the supply chain. The significant advantage of this generalized description is its ability to exchange amendments between tools automatically.