CSIRO’s Adaptive Supply Networks research is supported by mathematical science.

Adaptive supply networks

CSIRO researchers are partnering with industry to develop advanced decision support technologies for adaptive supply networks.

• 23 July 2009 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Industry partnerships
• What we deliver
• Adaptive supply networks team

Adaptive supply networks are networks of businesses that cooperatively identify and adapt to the challenges in their shared environment.

CSIRO’s Adaptive Supply Networks team works with leading industry partners to develop advanced decision support technologies that are critical in networks that pursue adaptability and efficiency in the management of resources, goods, services and information.

The team focuses on the business and human relationship issues in adaptive supply networks and on creating decision-making processes and software tools that can make adaptive supply networks a reality for Australian businesses.

Industry partnerships

With its industry partners, the team develops and delivers decision support technologies.

Our technologies deliver an enduring competitive advantage by:

• improving the coordination of joint activities
• balancing both shared and individual objectives amongst the parties in the supply network
• bringing a new level of decision harmony to the supply network.

A particular focus is on improving the coordination of multi-party/multi-resource activities and balancing the varied objectives of supply network participants.

Our recent projects include working with:

• Orlando Wines to address the myriad of supply network issues involved with grape harvesting and wine production
• BlueScope Steel to produce logistics management solutions for steel coil export
• Southern Health to study patient transfer between acute and rehabilitation wards.

Team members are also working with the:

• Energy Transformed Flagship on the Intelligent Grid project and optimising battery use on wind farms
• Light Metals Flagship on control of aluminium production

What we deliver

The CSIRO team delivers decision tools and specialised software for operations management and analysis that are tailored to the specific needs of a business and its supply network.

Adaptive supply networks team

The team, headed by Dr Simon Dunstall, draws on three core capabilities:

• operations research, a branch of applied mathematics
• software engineering
• applied statistics.

Senior researchers from the team regularly attend logistics industry events in Australian and overseas to present research findings, case studies and perspectives on supply networks of the future.

Find out more about CSIRO's work in CSIRO Mathematical & Information Sciences.