Solution: A digital twin based on dynamic simulation

The Applied Intelligence team took the unconventional approach of creating a supply chain digital twin. Taking this approach created extra challenges and meant working closely with the client to ensure buy-in. The supply chain solution focused on predicting OTD times, to help reduce them, and providing a basis for a smart inventory-allocation solution, to improve planning. By creating a digital twin as the solution, it is possible to understand why something is happening and ask what-if questions. A digital twin is a dynamic model of a system based on real-world data that can be inspected and observed in operation the reason for results and behavior can be seen and explained. The team chose to use AnyLogic simulation modeling software for constructing the digital twin because of its flexibility and machine learning integrations, which they planned to use later. In AnyLogic, the team replicated the entire supply chain from vendors, through distribution centers (DC), to final-mile sites using discrete event modeling.