Cloud-based Auction Tower for Perishable Supply Chain Trading

Perishable supply chain trading (PSCT) involves typical activities that transfer perishable products among supply chain participants. Enhancing the traversal of perishable products through supply chains is essential for improving the standard of living and economic development. This study proposes a cloud-based auction tower to provide offline and online auction services for exchanging perishable products between suppliers and buyers. Product information service is designed to allow a huge kinds of perishable products to be represented and sold through the auction tower. The flexible auction server enables the deployment of many auction mechanisms. Dashboard-enabled information visibility and traceability facilitate operations and decisions of auction participants. The adoption of cloud computing achieves “pay-as-you-go” and “pervasive-to-access” implementation. The use of the auction tower leads to significant improvement in transaction capacity, market efficiency and effectiveness as well as supply and demand information visibility.