International Workshop on

Secure Supply Chain Collaboration
June 2, Barcelona

The workshop will take place in Barcelona on June 2, in parallel to the SIL 2009 Exhibition at the Fira de Barcelona - Gran Via. The workshop is open to all those interested in finding solutions to the challenges of data sharing and collaborative supply chain management across supply chain players. This is specifically aimed at reducing costs and securing data privacy. This event will bring together academics and industry experts to present and discuss the results of the Secure SCM project.

SecureSCM Project Description
It is a well-known fact in theoretical management that collaborative supply chain planning and management can significantly reduce operational costs. Nevertheless, its practical adoption is hindered by the fact that the business partners are reluctant to share the sensitive, but necessary data, such as production costs and capacities. The risks associated with revealing this private and sensitive information to potential competitors causes their reluctance to participate. It may, on occasion, strongly influence their position in future price negotiations with these parties.

SecureSCM ’s solution to this problem relies on sound cryptographic techniques such as secure multi-party computation in order to cooperatively manage the supply chain.  It collaboratively computes the optimization function of the supply chain based on the partners’ input, but without revealing this input to anyone. This security guarantee can be proven by means of a formal, mathematical model. It is therefore possible to reconcile the conflicting goals of data sharing and collaborative supply chain management and provide the best of both worlds: reduced costs and the retention of data privacy.

SecureSCM is funded by the European Commission through the 7^th Framework Programme. The consortium comprises of 7 members from 4 countries. Jointly they built the first practical solution for such a type of secure collaboration among supply chains partners. The project brings together researchers from mathematics, computer science, information systems and management to work together to solve this common problem. Its particular research challenges are:

· Laying the cryptographic foundation for confidentiality-preserving protocols in supply chains

· Building and evaluating real systems by implementing those protocols

· Demonstrate the costs and benefits of this approach in a number of industries, including Aerospace and Logistics

· Fostering the practical adoption of this approach by stimulating product and market development

More info on the SecureSCM project.