Chemical supply chain modeling for analysis of homeland security events

Authored by Mark A. Ehlen, Amy C. Sun, Mark A. Pepple, Eric D. Eidson, Brian S. Jones

Date Published: 2014-01-10

DOI: 10.1016/j.compchemeng.2013.07.014

Sponsors: United States Department of Homeland Security

Platforms: No platforms listed

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Flow charts Mathematical description

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

The potential impacts of man-made and natural disasters on chemical plants, complexes, and supply chains are of great importance to homeland security. To be able to estimate these impacts, we developed an agent-based chemical supply chain model that includes: chemical plants with enterprise operations such as purchasing, production scheduling, and inventories; merchant chemical markets, and multi-modal chemical shipments. Large-scale simulations of chemical-plant activities and supply chain interactions, running on desktop computers, are used to estimate the scope and duration of disruptive-event impacts, and overall system resilience, based on the extent to which individual chemical plants can adjust their internal operations (e.g., production mixes and levels) versus their external interactions (market sales and purchases, and transportation routes and modes). To illustrate how the model estimates the impacts of a hurricane disruption, a simple example model centered on 1,4-butanediol is presented. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Tags

Agent-based modeling Economic markets Linear programming Supply chain resilience Supply chains Transportation networks