System Dynamics Approach Based Decision Support System for Decentralized Marketing Logistics

Decentralized marketing logistics designing, optimization and integration is of paramount significance in emerging economies such as India. The diversity in production systems and demand structures noticeable nearly through all the manufacturing sectors in India necessitates the need of looking at such logistics from a systems-perspective. It furthers the systemic need of modeling such systems as flow rates and accumulations linked by information feedback loops involving delays and non-linear relationships. Also, on account of the fact that decentralized logistics contains many non-linear relationships, and therefore an analytical solution to solving model equations is not optimally feasible. One promising method to investigate inter-organizational decentralized marketing network using systems approach through formal modeling and simulation is System Dynamics. System dynamics can take credit for being the first branch of mathematical research that can effectively investigate management policies for decentralized supply chains and suggest solution optimization. System Dynamics tools prove to be a powerful, yet simple and cost-effective methodology for developing deep insights in the working of various decentralized logistics systems and providing management flight simulators for policy design and process-integration based on the optimum solutions generated through the calibrated computer models