Supporting Demand Supply Network Optimization with Petri Nets

Abstract

The present study implements a generic methodology for describing and analyzing demand supply networks, that is, networks from a company’s suppliers to its customers. There can be many possible demand supply networks with different logistics costs for a product. Therefore, we introduce a Petri Net-based formalism, and a reachability analysis based algorithm that finds the optimum demand supply network for a user-specified product structure. The method has been implemented and is currently in production use inside all Nokia business groups. It is used in demand supply planning of both network elements and handsets. An example of the method’s application to a concrete Nokia product is included.