7. Resilience by Teaming: Sourcing Network Design and Flow Management Protocols

Every SN agent a in \(A^{K} \cup A^{O}\) needs to receive input flow from a set of predecessors P _a in order to operate and provide output to its successors. Such agents face a medium-term strategic decision, i.e., which agents to select as P _a , and a short-term operational decision, i.e., which agents in P _a to source from at time t. These distributed strategic decisions of agents a ∈ A shape the dynamic topology of the supply network, and give rise to its structural resilience, as well as determine, at least in part, the ability of each SN agent to cope with sourcing disruptions. This chapter presents the theoretical aspects of two sourcing protocols inspired in the Fault-tolerance by Teaming principle, FTT, of Collaborative Control Theory (Nof 2007), CCT, to select a team of predecessors P _a and to adaptively manage flow from these agents. The Sourcing Team Formation/Re-configuration Protocol (STF/RP) and Sourcing Flow Control Protocol (SFCP) leverage inherent randomness in individual agents in P _a to provide a more stable and resilient input to agent a.