Fruit supply chain simulation: a literature review

This paper reviews the current literature on fruit supply chain simulation and contributes a set of findings that capture the state-of-the-art in the field. A total of 81 articles on supply chain simulation have been systematically reviewed according to the objective(s) of the study and the simulation method(s) used. The findings reveal that majority of the reviewed studies focused on supply chain structure and design, strategy and policy formulation, supply chain behaviour analysis, and decision support for supply chain management. The most commonly used simulation methods comprise discrete event simulation, system dynamics, and agent-based simulation. Including those studies which adopted more than one simulation approaches, discrete event simulation is by far the most popular simulation technique employed. The findings may provide valuable reference and guideline to practitioners in the fruit supply chain management community who wish to employ simulation as a tool to assist in decision making