Texbase is making it easier for brands to identify and track facilities and factories in their supply chain by incorporating a standardized identification system.
This week, the Bozeman, Mont.-based cloud-based supply chain management platform said it has integrated Open Supply Hub (OS Hub) facility identifiers into its system. This gives Texbase clients a consistent reference point for identify production facilities and connecting those locations with corresponding products, testing and compliance information managed in Texbase.
OS Hub is a nonprofit, open-access platform that maps production facilities around the world and connects them to the brands and organizations working with them. Each production location has a unique OS ID. The IDs are free to use and are designed to support connections between systems, giving brands, suppliers and regulators a consistent way to reference the same facility.
With this integration, Texbase aims to help brands comply with traceability and transparency regulations. Texbase said a single production facility often appears under different names across supplier lists and systems, making records difficult to reconcile and the information tied to each location harder to trust. This can lead to other complications, such as difficultly proving a product’s origin.
“Brands can’t fully stand behind a product claim if they can’t say with confidence where that product was made, and where all its materials come from,” said Joe Walkuski, Texbas founder and chief product officer.
He noted that globally recognized IDs give brands a standardized way to identify facilities across the data systems they already use. “That creates a stronger foundation for initiatives such as digital product passports and for the next wave of product data requirements,” he said.
“Open data delivers its greatest value when it’s put to work,” said Natalie Grillon, Open Supply Hub CEO. “The OS ID was built as shared, open infrastructure so brands, suppliers, service providers and civil society organizations can all recognize the same production location, no matter which system they’re working in. Integrations like this one with Texbase carry that common reference into the product and supply chain workflows where brands make day-to-day decisions, and each one strengthens the case for an open, collaborative approach to facility data across the industry.”
