Abstract:
Supply chain applications typically involve sharing of large amounts of information across a number of
partner organizations. Examples of supply chain applications are common in manufacturing, healthcare and
global trade. Such applications can involve a large number of partners in different locations with various
levels of connectivity, ranging from high-speed Internet to unreliable and slow dial-up connections.
Maintaining data consistency in supply chain applications is an essential requirement as the loss of data
consistency results in poor quality and unreliable information. Current supply chain applications mostly rely
on EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) or similar electronic messaging standards to ship data between partner
organizations. In general, little attention is paid to ensuring that data remains consistent as it is propagated
and updated along the supply chain. In this paper we fIrst discuss the requirements for data consistency in
supply chain applications and then briefly describe a data consistency management framework based on
data replication. We use Freight Forwarding and Customs Brokerage (FFCB) applications examples to
illustrate our discussion.
