Agent Based Modelling of Milk and its Productions Supply Chain and Bullwhip Effect Phenomena (Case Study: Kerman)

Simulating decision-making process of agents of supply chain is affected by various economic and social factors. The main purpose of this paper was to investigate the behavior of the agents of the milk and its products supply chain using data for the year 2016 with emphasizing on dairy farmers against the policy increasing raw milk price. In this regard, bullwhip effect is one of the important issues raised in supply chain. The present paper investigated the presence or absence of bullwhip effect in the milk supply chain and its products, using moving average method and order-up-to-level r. Improvement in supply chain performance is one of the major issues in the current world. Lack of coordination in the supply chain is the main drawback of supply chain that many researchers have proposed different methodologies to overcome it. In addition, the application of agent-based simulation has been investigated in order to improve performance indicator in supply chain. The results showed there is the bullwhip effect in the supply chain, therefore, the bullwhip effect can be reduced or even eliminated using centrality in decision-making by the agents in supply chain.