Agent-based Simulation of National Oil Products Distribution Company’s Supply Network in the Framework of a Complex Adaptive System in Order to Achieve an Optimal Inventory Level

One of the most important challenges of supply chains is the coordination of inventory policies among supply chain elements including suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors. Accordingly, the current study aims to investigate the achievement of the elements of the petrol distribution system to the optimal level of inventory. At first, the supply network of National Guilan Oil Products Distribution Company is defined as a complex adaptive system and then, this network is simulated using agent-based modeling. The core component of this simulation consists of interactions between agents or members of the supply network in the context of inventory management based on the economic order quantity (EOQ). The results of simulation in Net Logo software showed that agent-based modeling of the network in the form of a complex adaptive system leads to better understanding of the behavior of supply chain agents in their achievement to the optimal inventory level and enables them to get the proper estimate of the economic order quantity, re-order point and total cost. In summary, it can be seen that the agents in the supply chain have the ability to provide their customers’ needs and will not face lost sales as long as they do not pay extra inventory costs.