Background
The COVID pandemic revealed vulnerabilities in global supply chains that resulted from the lack of a communications infrastructure between supply and its stakeholders. In response, NIST’s cyber-physical systems leaders, HELPFUL, academics at Saint Joseph’s University, University of New Mexico, University of Toulouse, and others, have collaborated on the development of a supply chain framework that:
- Provides conceptual foundations for supply and is capable of notifying the parties, involved in a contract, when disruptions in the supply chain may derail the fulfillment of terms – in real-time
- Recommends alternative fulfillment options that meet the negotiated terms (quantity, specifications, arrival, price, logistics, etc.)
- Harnesses AI (pattern recognition trained by large datasets) and ML (reasoning) to rapidly generate actionable insights
- Given the magnitude of post-disaster recovery, whether man-made or natural and the complexity of interdependencies, this framework will seek to deliver a new paradigm in terms of agility, transparency, stakeholder trust and resilience.
Program Literature
Pre-read documentation and the working papers behind the SCIS Framework can be accessed through:
Upcoming Developments
Helpful will be hosting a workshop introducing the Supply Chain Interoperability Specification (SCIS).
Contributors to the specification, including National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists, HELPFUL volunteers, researchers from Saint Joseph’s University, New Mexico State University, ANITI Toulouse , and field experts will:
- Introduce the language of the Supply Chain;
- Present a new framework and concept of supply chain operations;
- Discuss example use cases for the specification;
- Establish governance over the new ecosystem;
- Define a plan for the development of this platform of platforms, including the identification of initial and future working groups.
Registration to the event is free and can be done through eventbrite at http://shorturl.at/gvQ09
Session video recordings and outcomes will be made publicly available here as will subsequent details surrounding the evolving program components and discussion forums after the workshop on the 21st of July.
