Scalability and agility of the Smart Connected Supplier Network approach

Scalability and agility of the Smart Connected Supplier Network approach

Stolwijk, C.C.M.
Berkers, F.T.H.M.

2020

Digital collaboration in the supply chain is one of the means for manufacturing companies to increase efficiency and reduce costs. However, various supply chain partners do not collaborate in a digital way yet since they use different and noninterconnected ICT systems. In order to solve this challenge, the partners of the Smart Connected Supplier Network (SCSN) digital innovation hub developed a standard for information sharing based on semantic technology, thereby ensuring optimal interoperability between the supply chain partners for the most prominent information streams. The SCSN standard builds on the International Data Spaces1 (IDS) standard. This is a European standard for data sharing that enables data sovereignty developed by the partners of the International Data Spaces Association.2 SCSN and IDS bring a “connect-once -reach the entire supply chain scenario” to manufacturing companies. 3 This is differing from traditional bilateral EDI connections or the use of centralized (cloud) platforms. Manufacturing companies need to establish a single connection, once, with an ICT Service Provider. There are multiple ICT Service Providers, which are fully interconnected amongst each other using IDS technology. In this way, a manufacturing company can connect to any other company reachable in the SCSN network. This approach makes the supply chain collaboration easier to implement and scale,enables manufacturing companies to reduce the administrative burden and helps them to prevent errors. It also enables agility of the entire supply chain and a more successful risk management. In turn, this reduces the time-to-market for manufacturing companies and suppliers, enabling them to respond quicker to changing market demands. In this report we measured the added value of the SCSN standard, compared to more traditional approaches, based on a simulation of the evolution of the supply network, while introducing the SCSN standard for interoperability. A total ‘market’ of 1.200 manufacturing companies was assumed with 3 ICT Service Providers connecting them to the network. We assumed a timeframe of 5 years for the companies to adopt the standard and the approach. The main conclusion from the simulation is that the SCSN standard will realize the benefits of the digitalization of the manufacturer-customer connection much faster and provides manufacturing companies access to a wider network of customers and suppliers.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:36745cb0-3d5f-4f79-9034-93e02e80529c

878412

TNO 2020 R11179

TNO, Den Haag

report