SupplyChain++ Files

SupplyChain README file


Introduction
------------

This is the introductory documentation for SupplyChain library. 
You need Qt to have this C++ library working.
SupplyChain++ is 100% commented and ready to generate a comprehensive guide by
using doxygen.

SupplyChain's main objective is to provide the functionality of a real world's
supply chain. Of course, it has some differences. Theses Supply Chains would be
constituted by two mandatory components: Initial Producers and Final Consumers,
residing each group into ProducerSCNode and ConsumerSCNode classes instances.
Apart from these components, a SupplyChain can be built by any number of Manufacturer
nodes, represented by the ManufacturerSCNode class. Each node can contain any number
of its type elements: a ProducerSCNode will contain from 1 to any number of Producer
objects, as well as the ConsumerSCNode and the ManufacturerSCNode do with Consumer
and Manufacturer objects. Thanks to these elements, very powerful Supply Chains can
be modeled and constructed, taking full advantage of last concurrent developing techniques
provided by the Qt Framework.


Modeling the Supply Chain
-------------------------

The power of the library resides on its flexibility, acquired thanks to
a well-designed extensible architecture. The classes SupplyChain, Producer,
Manufacturer, Assembler and Consumer provides the needed functionality to create a
custom chain of the desired type of object. Using the SupplyChain class and creating
new classes by extending the basic element's ones will allow the developer to create
any SupplyChain model. Each SC node's elements will be connected with all the next node's
elements. The SupplyChain class provides methods to model itself before getting it to work.


Getting the Supply Chain to start producing
-------------------------------------------

As soon as the developer has created its concrete Producer, Consumer and maybe Manufacturer
or Assembler extending classes, he can construct the desired SupplyChain. After giving it the
wanted shape, just invoking two methods will get the SupplyChain to start producing: SupplyChain::buildChain()
and SupplyChain::start().


Example Program
---------------

There is one example program which demonstrates the functionalities of this library. Its called
SupplyChainTester and will show you along the process of getting a SupplyChain modeled and producing.