Cloud-Based Global Supply Chain: A New Platform for Growth and Profitability of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise

Most of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are facing a slowdown growth and market failure around the world due to insufficient capabilities and poor reaction time compared to large companies. In this study, Cloud-Based Global Supply Chain (CBGSC), as a new conceptual model, has been developed in order to improve growth and profitability of SMEs. It can overcome or mitigate the issues and challenges associated with SMEs’ supply chain on a global scale. CBGSC extends the conventional 3-tier customer–manufacturer–supplier supply chain model into a new 4-tier customer–Cloud Provider of Manufacturing and Supplying Applications (CPMSA)–manufacturer–supplier model, in which the CPMSA tier acts as an intermediator in order to enhance the diversity and intensity of the markets and businesses of conventional supply chain parties while securing its own profits. On the other hand, CBGSC enriches the notion of C-Manufacturing by incorporating CPMSA to continuous supply of raw materials for manufacturers as well as selection of efficient logistics services, thus prevailing the “share to gain” philosophy within the whole network. Also, a multilayer architecture including some mandatory layers (e.g., virtualization and service encapsulation layer) and some optional layer (e.g., optimization layer) is being proposed to facilitate practicalizing the CBGSC.