Manufacturers must get social with their supply chains

Mark Morley of B2B supply chain network services specialist GXS explains in his blog: "In recent years, manufacturers have globalised their operations due to the need to reduce costs and explore business opportunities in new markets. "Establishing a new manufacturing plant in a remote location has its problems, the most important of which is guaranteeing a reliable supply of parts from key suppliers and, more importantly, maintaining regular communications with them." All well and good, he says, but then there are the communication and collaboration problems. And hence his insistence on the value of relatively new social network technologies "One company that has developed a social networking tool for the supply chain is RollStream and in 2009 GXS partnered with this company to leverage their social networking platform amongst the trading partner communities connected to GXS' Trading Grid," he says. Since this partnership started, GXS has seen an increasing interest in applying this type of social networking tool across supply chains -- which led to GXS acquiring RollStream on 29 March 2011. Morley describes it as "LinkedIn for the supply chain, and explains that it allows manufacturers and suppliers to develop electronic social supply chains, pulling together all sorts of information flows through one portal environment. "I think this will transform the way manufacturers communicate with their trading partner communities around the world," he predicts. "After all, GXS RollStream has been designed from the ground up to operate in a similar way to other social networking tools [but with] a more structured and business-focused way to communicate and collaborate with suppliers." Morley also suggests that, from a manufacturing perspective, although GXS RollStream can be used in many different situations, the key point is "that it helps to improve communication flows among trading partner communities".