SCORVoc: Vocabulary-Based Information Integration and Exchange in Supply Networks

Abstract

Advanced, highly specialized economies require instant, robust and efficient information flows within its value-added and Supply Chain networks. Especially also in the context of the recent Industry 4.0, smart manufacturing or cyber-physical systems initiatives more efficient and effective information exchange in supply networks is of paramount importance. The Supply Chain Operation Reference (SCOR) is a cross-industry approach to lay the groundwork for this goal by defining a conceptual model for Supply Chain related information. Semantics-based approaches could facilitate information flows in supply networks, and enable to analyze, monitor and optimize Supply Chains (in particular for robustness). This paper first reviews existing formalizations of the Supply Chain Council's SCOR standard. It then introduces the SCORVoc RDFS vocabulary which fully formalizes the latest SCOR standard, while over-coming the identified limitations of existing work. SCORVoc is operationalized by a set of SPARQL queries, that enable to evaluate metrics and key performance indicator (KPIs) defined by SCOR, on-the-fly, in an information systems that adheres to the vocabulary. Finally, we define concrete test scenarios and implement a synthetic benchmark to demonstrate the practicality of SCORVoc.