Supply chain transparency is an ongoing challenge. Organizations and platforms working to make supply chain data more accessible often struggle with interoperability—how to ensure that data from different sources can be meaningfully compared, shared, and analyzed. This is where Open Supply Hub and the Supply Chain Data Exchange (SC-DEX) intersect. Open Supply Hub (OS Hub) is a global open database that makes production location-level supply chain data available to the world, while SC-DEX is an open standard designed to help structure and exchange that data in a machine-readable way. The two are not the same, but they are highly complementary, and designed to be. As we’re learning right now in ongoing pilots, SC-DEX fulfills a need that many civil society organizations, and other data holders and stewards of supply chain data have—to exchange data and act as a powerful complement to their own capabilities. You might think of it as OS Hub providing a home for a specific type of supply chain data (in our case, locations), and SC-DEX as what ensures that data can flow seamlessly between different systems, making it easier for organizations to integrate, analyze, build, and act on it.
We get a lot of questions like “What is the difference between SC-DEX and OS Hub?” and “How does SC-DEX fit into other data standards/identifiers?” In this post, we’ll explore…
- how OS Hub and SC-DEX are complementary
- why and how we developed SC-DEX’s brand guidelines to match
- how we hope public brand guidelines like these enable more collaboration across the ecosystem
This isn’t just about branding—it’s about creating an ecosystem where open data and open standards reinforce each other and visibly signal this interoperability.
Making Open Data, Usable Data
Open Supply Hub exists to make supply chain location data open, accessible, and usable. Organizations can contribute data to OS Hub and, in return, gain access to a shared, deduplicated dataset of unique location identifiers. However, one of the biggest challenges in supply chain data sharing isn’t just making data public—it’s making it structured in a standardized way. This helps with looking up specific data points, cross-referencing information, and linking to other data sources while knowing that everyone is talking about the same thing. For example, at a recent working session we attended, stakeholders reported that agricultural producers are asked on average for the same data 8 times! Imagine being asked to fill out your tax forms 8 times, in 8 different ways, all to provide the same exact information. Or the opposite—imagine sending out a survey to collect information, but each person decided to respond in a different order, phrased in their own way, potentially in different languages. The amount of time that you’d have to put into cleaning up all those responses to be able to compare it properly would be more time than being able to actually learn and apply the useful information. This is the tangle of data formats that the lack of a unified data exchange standard results in.
That’s where SC-DEX comes in. SC-DEX provides a standardized format for structuring and exchanging supply chain data in a machine-readable way, enabling information sharing at scale. It’s designed so that different platforms—whether they are global databases like OS Hub, private company systems, or industry initiatives—can speak the same data language. OS Hub, as an open supply chain location data platform, can use SC-DEX to ensure that its data is more easily integrated into other supply chain tools. And for SC-DEX to be widely useful, more organizations like OS Hub—or organizations that already contribute data to OS Hub—need to adopt SC-DEX as a common format for data exchange.
SC-DEX and OS Hub—like LEGOs for Supply Chain Data
The relationship between OS Hub and SC-DEX is a case study of how open platforms and open standards reinforce each other. OS Hub makes supply chain data available; SC-DEX makes it interoperable. Think about it like LEGOs—yes, that’s right, the toy bricks. If each type of supply chain data is a LEGO brick, and OS Hub data are location “bricks,” then SC-DEX is like the little connector in each brick that makes it possible to connect OS Hub data to other kinds of data about supply chains.
Image Source: BrickLink
As SC-DEX evolved from an idea into a real, usable standard, it became clear that we needed to define it—not just technically, but also in terms of how we talk about it, how it looks, and how it fits into the broader open supply chain data movement. That’s where creating accessible language around SC-DEX comes in.
A core group within SC-DEX created a set of brand guidelines to define how we present SC-DEX visually and verbally, and is open for review and comment by the public. They clarify SC-DEX’s relationship with Open Supply Hub and other platforms by reinforcing key messages: SC-DEX is a tool for structuring and exchanging data, and it becomes most useful when platforms like OS Hub adopt it. The guidelines help ensure that SC-DEX is framed not as a competitor to existing platforms but as a standard that supports and enhances them.
One of the key aspects of these guidelines is the terminology we use. In the guidelines, we define what it means to be a “partner,” a “pilot,” or an “implementer” of SC-DEX, ensuring that organizations that engage with the standard know exactly where they fit in. This language also helps us describe how Open Supply Hub can implement SC-DEX, and how other organizations that already use OS Hub can extend that value by adopting SC-DEX for their own data exchanges.
This is meant to make sure that we’re able to talk about the standard at the scale of the ecosystem—that everyone is able to be on the same page about how we talk about ourselves, and work towards cohesive clarity and consensus in communicating our goals.
Open Standards, Open Brand Guidelines
Rather than keeping these brand guidelines locked away, we published them on GitHub—a space where the open data and tech community can access, adapt, and contribute to them.
This reflects the philosophy behind SC-DEX itself: just as the standard is meant to be adaptable to different supply chain needs, its branding should be something that organizations can interpret and apply in ways that fit their own use cases.
By making the guidelines open and adaptable, we also invite collaboration. As more organizations integrate SC-DEX into their systems, we can refine how to describe this process and connect to tutorials that all describe onboarding and the user experience in the same way, ensuring that the messaging evolves with real-world use. This also helps clarify SC-DEX’s role in different contexts—whether it’s being used by an open database like OS Hub, a private sector platform, or a multi-stakeholder initiative.
In many ways, publishing these guidelines is a test of the same principles we want to see applied to supply chain data: openness, adaptability, and collective ownership.
The Future of SC-DEX
Looking ahead, the success of SC-DEX will depend on its adoption by platforms like OS Hub and the broader supply chain community—everyone generates data, and we all benefit from having this data be in a usable, interoperable format. The more organizations that format their data according to SC-DEX, the more interoperable supply chain data becomes. The other standards that might include SC-DEX as a part of their own schema to resolve core identity issues can also include this standardized format upstream, like UNTP. That, in turn, makes it easier for companies, civil society organizations, and policymakers to gain a more complete, accurate, and usable picture of global supply chains.
The relationship between Open Supply Hub and SC-DEX is just one example of how open platforms and open standards can work together. But it’s a powerful one. It demonstrates that data alone isn’t enough—we also need ways to structure and exchange it. By aligning an open database with an open standard, we take a step toward making supply chain data both available and even more actionable.
SC-DEX is a machine-readable JSON data schema for publishing supply chain locations, specifying geographic coordinates (e.g., factories, warehouses) and regions (e.g., farm fields, deforested areas). It also expresses the relationships between these locations and organizational affiliations (e.g., ownership, supplier-vendor).
This defines a set of objects and relationships between them, in order to model supply chains and consequently facilitate data exchange between different stakeholders and improve visibility, efficiency and decision making.
If you’re interested in using SC-DEX, contributing to its development, or seeing how it can be applied in your organization, join our communities on Slack or Linkedin, and check out the SC-DEX GitHub or at www.supplychaindata.exchange or email us for more information.
