IBM announced Rapid Supplier Connect, a supply chain solution designed to help with COVID-19 shortages. Buyers joining the network include New York hospitals and healthcare providers, but it’s also designed to help government agencies.
Numerous companies that are not usually part of the healthcare supply chain are now producing PPE equipment such as masks, gowns, visors and other items in short supply. IBM says the Worldwide Supply Chain Federation has onboarded 200 American suppliers. The challenge for the buyers is to find these companies and to trust them, which is where blockchain comes in.
The new solution uses the Trust Your Supplier blockchain, developed by Chainyard, which allows suppliers to sign up once and their information to be shared multiple times with permissioned buyers. Apart from saving time for the supplier, for the buyer, it radically reduces the onboarding time for new suppliers. Outside of this COVID-19 use case, numerous big brands are using Trust Your Supplier, including Vodafone, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Nokia and Schneider Electric.
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