With a new B2B online platform, the European research initiative NIMBLE offers intelligent management of supply chains for companies. The final release of the platform, which was intensively tested with over 250 companies as part of the research work, is now freely available. The open source platform software is suitable for strengthening the cooperation between companies in a region or within an economic sector.

In the European research initiative NIMBLE (Collaboration Network for Industry, Manufacturing, Business and Logistics in Europe), the infrastructure for a cloud-based, IoT-enabled B2B platform was developed under the direction of Salzburg Research. Companies can register on such a platform, publish machine-readable catalogues for products and services, search for suitable partners for the supply chain, negotiate contracts and handle delivery logistics. By securely exchanging business-to-business and machine-to-machine information, collaboration between companies can be strengthened and the business workflow optimized.

COVID-19 has shown that professional and integrated supply chain management ensures the survival of companies. Transparent supply chains with a balanced mix between regionality and internationality minimize the entrepreneurial risk. Potential platform operators, such as Representatives, interest groups or companies can either use the software directly or adapt it to a sector with little effort.

Salzburg Research provides a NIMBLE platform instance for demonstration purposes, with which interested parties can experiment. Salzburg Research will be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the implementation of an operator concept and the use of the open source platform software.

NIMBLE was supported by the European Commission’s H2020 technology research program for “Factories of the Future”.

More information: B2B-Supply-Chain-Plattform fördert Online-Zusammenarbeit von Unternehmen (press release in German)