Real-timeservice profiling for the efficient simulation of logistics networks

Abstract

Driven by rising competitive constraints companies began to outsource at least parts of their internal activities to specialized external logistics providers in terms of contracts. Thereby, new business models like the fourth party logistics provider evolved, who acts like coordinator of the emerging logistics networks. The main tasks of the provider are the planning, monitoring and measurement of such networks. In this contribution a holistic method to integrate process modeling and their simulation within the planning phase is introduced. Furthermore, an integrated approach to support the planning with real-time information to overcome the challenges from simulation is outlined. Due to this approach, the simulation generates more reliable results and contemporary reduces the effort using simulation techniques. Therefore, complex event processing is used to gather real-time information about process executions and provides this information as service profiles for simulation.