TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to present and test a methodology, extending the concept of hierarchical Petri nets, to discover conflicts in a distribution channel.Design/methodology/approach– The approach involves linking different levels of the supply chain and detecting conflicts occurring when the single entities, each optimized for its own operations, are combined together in a supply chain. Specifically, a methodology is proposed for synthesizing individual Petri Net models combined with matrix equations in order to detect and manage conflicts in a supply chain. These conflicts may stem from differing goals, planning and resources.Findings– The methodology offers the user the ability to investigate the potential for conflicts in the system and manage the system to avoid such conflicts before they occur. The proposed approach holds promise for both the short term and long term for effective supply chain management and design. This would enable the supply chain to put sufficient protection (e.g. buffers) in strategic locations relative to the potential conflict or contingency plans in place to handle the conflict when it occurs.Originality/value– While the ability to discover and pre‐empt conflicts would be a valuable asset to the management and design of supply chains, there is little insight found, to date, in the research on effective methods to realize detection. The current paper provides a systematic approach through the development of a hierarchical Petri net extension to detect conflicts prior to occurrence in an integrated supply chain system. VL - 9 IS - 2 SN - 0972-7981 DO - 10.1108/09727981211271959 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/09727981211271959 AU - John Franklin R. AU - Prasad P.S.S. ED - V.K. Jain ED - P.K. Jain PY - 2012 Y1 - 2012/01/01 TI - Supply chain conflict detection with coloured petri nets T2 - Journal of Advances in Management Research PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 208 EP - 216 Y2 - 2024/04/24 ER -