A Hybrid Multicloud System for Effective Supply Chain Product Information Dissemination

Abstract

Effective supply chain communication is of paramount importance in todays world, more so than ever. This is because of the greater disclosure, notification and safe use information dissemination needs placed on every part or article placed on the market. The fact that the extended supply chain is often more than sixteen layers deep and spanned across all continents and oceans makes it even more complex. When one considers the cross-sector supply chain and the nature and scope of materials and substances involved, one begins to see the extent of the complexity. Added to this, is the fact that in various parts of the world, the language requirements will be different. Yet, when a product is placed on the market in those areas, the regulatory regime will require that critical compositions and safe usage be posted in local languages and/or in visually understandable pictures and representations/images/videos. The underlying data that must be communicated is often of myriads of forms, including spreadsheets, structured data and also unstructured data and images and videos. It is also important to consider that supply chain data must have the following characteristics:1.It must be standards based.2.By nature, multiple language and character sets are to be allowed.3.It must be authenticatable-both provenance and the data integrity are important.4.The process for updates must allow for synchronization across the various levels of the supply chain/5.The cost burden must not be high. By its nature, supply chain data must cost as minimal as possible to promote cost effectiveness and keep overhead cost to a minimum. This is especially true for programs involving corporate responsibility (CSR) as these actions are a show of ethical behavior on the part of corporations, and thus profoundly, companies promoting ethical behavior must not be burdened with costs, as otherwise it will give the scofflaws and nonconformers of CSR an edge in business.6.Safe use data can often be in video format and thus very large in size-it may be advantageous to provide these as web links rather than attach them. It is to be noted that videos on safe use will alleviate the need for instructions to be translated into multiple languages.7.Zipping attachments is more efficient than embedding binary data in files and files could be bulky and the large files need not always be opened whereas the base file will invariably need to be read.8.Monopolistic practices should be avoided and prevented.A platform that optimizes all these needs across multiple clouds and cloud database formats was developed and best management practices reveal the advantages of such an approach.