Supply Chain of Things: A Connected Solution to Enhance Supply Chain Productivity

The ubiquitous connectivity between the things in a supply chain ecosystem will contribute to the information flow essential for establishing smart solutions for efficient, reliable, and intelligent supply chain operations. In this article, a new model integrating supply chain and IoT, referred to as SCoT, is proposed to evolve into SSCE and thus enhance supply chain productivity. Productivity in this article considers not only the rate of product output but also product quality and the rate of new product development. First, the ubiquitous and ultra-reliable connectivity necessary for connecting all things in SCoT is newly defined. Four fundamental applications in SSCE are identified, and four related use cases are discussed. Seamless information access in the fully connected SCoT network will facilitate supply chain management. A novel universal SCoT platform is thus proposed to perform intelligent operations on quality measurement, product integration, and decision making. Hitherto, there is no universal standard that quantitatively grades all Supply Chain of Things with a single indicator. To ensure the platform's objectiveness and consistency, an emerging IoT standard of IEEE P2668, namely IDex, is incorporated into the platform. IDex provides quantitative measurement, grading, and ranking of all IoT things. In addition, IDex also benefits the platform by contributing three extra functions to advise on a solution for quality improvement, integration guidance, and performance prediction. Ultimately, SCoT will proliferate five key impacts on automated quality control, efficient integration, smart transportation, intelligent decision making, and end-to-end traceability. Finally, three key future research directions in the implementation of SCoT are discussed.