Applying big data and linked data concepts in supply chains management

One of the contemporary problems, and at the same time a big opportunity, in business networks of supply chains are the issues associated with the vast amounts of data arising there. The data may be utilized by the decision support systems in logistics; nevertheless, often there is an information integration problem. The problems with information interchange are related to issues with exchange between independently designed data systems. The networked supply chains will need appropriate IT architectures to support the cooperating business units utilizing structured and unstructured big data and the mechanisms to integrate data in heterogeneous supply chains. In this paper we analyze the capabilities of the big data technology architectures with cloud computing under usage of Linked Data in business process management in supply chains to cope with unstructured near-time data and data silos problems. We present our approach on a 4PL (Fourth-party Logistics) integrator business process example.