Service portfolios for supply chain composition: Creating business network interoperability and agility

Abstract

As organisations compete more and more in supply chains, they need to work together in business networks that require interoperability and agility in order to reconfigure supply chains and create new ones. In recent years, interoperability has been improved at the technological level by the introduction of service-oriented architectures and web-service technology and at the semantic level by the creation of ontologies and the use of semantic technologies. Yet, at a pragmatic level, many research questions remain unanswered. In this paper the authors introduce the concept of service portfolios, a pragmatic web instrument used to support the composition and reconfiguration of manufacturing chains. A service portfolio contains an overview of the services provided by the organisations in a business network that can potentially be used to create a supply chain. Stakeholders can use a service portfolio for communication and synchronisation of meaning among stakeholders and make decisions. The concept of service portfolios is illustrated on the basis of a computer manufacturing case study, indicating that a service portfolio can improve the agility of a business network and speed up the formation of supply chains at lower costs, as it enables the rapid composition of supply chain processes from reusable components.