Luxembourg media monitoring and analysis company Cure Intelligence is to launch a new tool for companies to monitor and analyse their supply chain risks.
The Grevemacher-based company initially developed the first iteration of Supply Chain Resilient Instruments for Optimal Operations, or SCRIOO for short, to respond to the supply chain needs of a German client in order to be compliant with the German Due Diligence Act.
“That legislation, which has been in place since the start of 2023, requires companies to monitor their suppliers for human rights violations, workers rights violations, ESG violations and environmental protection” says CURE Intelligence head of analytics and insights Dr Joscha Krause, adding: “It is compulsory for companies of a given size but that size will decrease next year.”
Since the European Union is working on similar legislation that will apply to companies in the entire EU employing 250 staff or more, Cure Intelligence recognised the technology’s potential on a larger scale.
The tech company, which has forged a reputation in the field of data intelligence solutions and online marketing services since it was founded in 2009, launched SCRIOO in mid-November. The stand-alone web platform helps companies comply with due diligence legislation by using AI and big data to search through more than 150 million external data sources in 180 languages in real-time. Layers of AI filter the data for risks and scrape the data for incidents and evidence of supplier misconduct and issue a risk score from 0 to 100. “If something critical is detected, then we automatically provide summaries which are double-checked by our own analysts. Because we don’t want to rely on AI only,” says Krause.
The target customer is larger employers, however, when the EU enacts its legislation, smaller supply chain operators will also need to comply.
Cure Intelligence managing director Marco Feiten explains: “When a large client or a large company is obliged to follow the supply chain acts, they normally pass it on to their suppliers so that they are also affected by this legislation. So the market is huge.”
Supply Chain Disruption
In the future, the technology will not only detect misconduct but also incidents that show a risk of supply chain disruption, for instance, the Suez Canal blockage, which held up trade valued at over $9 billion per day.
That is why the company has joined forces with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology on a two-year research project which is funded by the Luxembourg economy ministry. The project will examine supply risk detection, prediction and resilience by “assembling thousands of what-if scenarios”.
Krause reckons that there is huge potential here not only because of legislation but also for geopolitical reasons and resource shortages.
“Think of the microchip shortages and the new sanctions and trading embargoes in place by the European Union against Russia for instance, or against some Chinese products,” says Dr. Krause. “These are the kinds of issues that will basically drive the issue of supply chain disruptions in the future.”
In 2024, the owners of Cure Intelligence will establish a dedicated company to run the SCRIOO technology. Cure is currently hiring data scientists and data engineers.
