Adapting a supply-chain simulation for HLA

Supply-chain management covers the planning and management of material and information from the manufacturer through the distributors, and finally to the customer. With the globalization of markets, the optimization of supply-chain management becomes more and more important. Simulation of supply-chains can help in the optimization process by evaluating the impact of alternative policies. To support the reusability of existing simulation models in a supply-chain simulation, a common standard is required for enabling the interoperability amongst different simulation programs through a well-defined interface. The High Level Architecture (HLA) is an architecture for reuse and interoperation of simulations. We report our experiences on employing the HLA to support reusability and interoperability in semiconductor supply-chain simulation. Our experiments show that by fine-tuning the integration of the application with the HLA Run-Time Infrastructure (RTI), considerable performance improvements can be achieved.