Open Access

Stefanie Berninger, Soo-Yon Kim, Joana Piel, Martin Perau, Sandra Geisler, Frank Piller, Klaus Wehrle, Jan Pennekamp

• The establishment, expansion, and operation of reliable value-creation networks present an increasing challenge for manufacturing companies, given the growing volatility of the market environment in which they operate. For example, the development of new business areas, mass customization, or the disruption of supply chains frequently necessitates the establishment of partnerships with new suppliers, both short- and long-term. The utilization of supplier key performance indicators (KPIs) can facilitate the selection of new business partners, as they provide a quick and objective indication of their reliability. Nevertheless, access to potentially sensitive KPIs, such as a supplier's on-time delivery performance, is currently mainly limited to existing supplier relationships and not made available to other companies. This paper presents a coordinated approach for supplier rating systems, thereby enabling the privacy-aware exchange of supplier KPIs across organizations and exemplifies it using an application in the “Internet of Production”. Specifically, we conduct interdisciplinary research by formulating the requirements from a business perspective (supply chain design, trust in data sharing, and business models) and evaluating promising solutions from a technical perspective (information security, data quality, data sovereignty, and collaboration). This approach enables the combination of state-of-the-art technology with the evolving requirements of stakeholders, thus creating new paths for exploiting inter-organizational supply chain rating.