Perspectives of Complexity and Intelligence on Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Abstract: In recent decades, millions of articles, books and journals have been written and thousandsseminars and conferences have been held to present increasing importance of supply chainmanagement both in practice and theory. Undoubtedly, nowadays, success is not tied-upjust in processes of a focal company but in processes of all its value chain and network. Inorder to survive in highly competitive markets, it sounds essential that all processes andentities of the supply and demand network be analyzed and value-adding ones be separatedfrom those which are not.One of the origins of non-value adding processes is non-value adding complexity. So, asystematic study and analysis of supply chain complexity and rendering remedies forsimplicity are essential.In this thesis, at first, some definitions as well as causes of supply chain complexity basedon its complication and complexity are mentioned. In the next step, embodiments of somethemes of complexity science in discipline of supply chains are explained. Later, a recipefor studying complexity is offered. Ingredients of this recipe are identification,classification, measurement, modeling, and simplification. Finally, implementation ofintelligent agents as assured tools for simplification of supply chains complexity isdescribed.