Modular IT-support for integrated supply chain design

Supply chain design deals with long-term and strategic decisions on thestructural design and configuration of supply chains. Available supply chain designtools offer particular planning functionaIities. They provide only little support for linking all activities within the workfIow of the user. Bridging this gap is the core innovation of the new approach presented in this article. The developments come along with the idea of a Domain Specific Modelling Language for simulation use in supply chain design tasks. This language translates the modeling elements of the application (application language) into the technical modelling elements of the tool (simulation tool language) and vice versa. As a result, the complexity of configuring a simulation model is kept at a minimum in the background. All this is embedded in an service-based tool architecture that enables work flow support of the user and collaborative engineering. FinaIIy, the application of the tool is presented in an practical use case of an automotive first tier supplier.