Supply Chain Network Simulator Using Cloud Computing

Project Information

Discipline

Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering (108) 

Orientation

Research 

Large-scale supply chains usually consist of thousands of stock keep units (SKUs) stocked at different locations within the supply chain. The purpose of this project is to develop a prototype software program that can allow the simulation of large-scale multi-echelon, multi-item supply networks using cloud-computing resources. These simulations are essentially compute-intensive Monte-Carlo experiments requiring multiple replications. Replications will be distributed across virtual machines within a cloud architecture.

This research will contribute to the computational sciences for the simulation of large-scale supply systems within a cloud computing architecture. The project will design simulation models of large-scale supply networks for execution within a cloud-computing environment. New insights and performance evaluation of cloud computing architectures will be obtained. The feasibility of the approach will be evaluated and cloud computing will become better understood by researchers outside of the computer science community.

The proposed effort will have broader impacts because companies will be able to use the results to develop better systems and software products that rely on cloud computing for applications involving this use case. Educational materials will be developed to provide how-to knowledge for other researchers and industry collaborators. The project will contribute to the research infrastructure, computing infrastructure, and the graduate student training in the State of Arkansas, a designated EPSCOR state.

Project Contact

Project Lead

Manuel Rossetti (rossetti) 

Project Manager

Yaohua Chen (chen) 

Project Members

Yaohua Chen, Garn LeBaron  

Resource Requirements

Hardware Systems

• alamo (Dell optiplex at TACC)
• hotel (IBM iDataPlex at U Chicago)
• india (IBM iDataPlex at IU)
• Not sure

 

In order to take advantage of cloud computing resources, the following execution scenario is being considered. A Java-based web service will be available to receive the input file from the user. A simple user interface will be available to permit the uploading of the file. The web service will package the workload associated with the simulation into jobs. Each job will represent one replication of the simulation. The web service will instantiate a cluster of virtual machines. Each virtual machine will be responsible for executing one or more replications of the simulation. The web service will coordinate with the virtual machines to schedule the execution of the simulation jobs and collect the results from each replication. After all replications are completed, the web service will package the results as a spreadsheet file and notify the user through email that the results are completed.

Small sets of VMs will be needed (e.g. 5-10) for short durations (1-4 hours) in order to establish feasibility of prototype and be available for testing.

Project Timeline

Submitted

06/29/2011 - 14:32