List processing times have changed!

Starting January 2025, we’ll need a little more time to process your data. This change will apply for at least the first nine months of the year.

For details on the new timelines, visit this page.

This is part one of three guides:

Preparing your data

Please read the directions on this page carefully. Then, download the OS Hub Data Template (see buttons below) to prepare your data. The facility data points you are able to upload are:

• country (required)
• name (required)
• address (required)*
• sector/product type(s) (highly recommended)
• facility/processing type
• number of workers (raw values or ranges accepted)
• parent company

Deluxe Embedded Map Users: If you have signed up for a Deluxe Embedded Map, you will receive a custom template with any additional data points you may have requested. Please use that template and follow the accompanying instructions to prepare your data for upload.

*Have you sourced GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude), in addition to address? Reach out to our team for a custom template to include them in your upload.

General Tips:

When you upload your list to Open Supply Hub, our team will run a quality check on it before accepting it into the system. This typically takes up to 15 business days for lists with 1000 entries or less, and up to 30 business days for lists with more than 1000 entries.* We are constantly working to maintain a balance between making it easy to share data, and preserving a high level of data quality, so that the data in the tool is as useful as possible.

*For Embedded Map users, the review period is 5 business days.

Follow the tips below to help us collectively raise the quality of supply chain data available for anyone who needs it:

• Do not change the column heading titles in the first row. The wording must be exact for our system to process them.

• If you don't have data for a particular data point, please leave the column or cell blank. Do not enter N/A or other filler text.
  

• All fields in your list must be in English.

• Please deduplicate your list. The OS Hub algorithm will check whether the facilities in your list already exist in OS Hub and match them accordingly. However, the algorithm will not remove duplicates within your list. Therefore, we ask that you remove duplicate facilities from your list before uploading.

• Separate your plots/units/buildings. Please only upload one plot/unit/building per row in your upload. This way, our algorithm and moderation team can easily match entries unit by unit.

• Ensure your facility names and addresses have fewer than 200 characters in a cell.

• Please do not use quotation marks and em dashes (—) in your file.

• If you used Excel formulas while preparing your data, consider copying your final dataset into a new sheet and pasting [only values] to avoid formula errors affecting your data.

• File size limit: 5MB

• Save your file as an Excel file (.xlsx) or as a CSV UTF-8 (.csv). Excel is preferred, if accessible to you.

Definitions and Tips By Data Point:

Country

• What is it? The country in which the production location is located. This is a required data point.
  
• Country names must be translated into English in order to be recognized by the system. OS Hub uses ISO country names for geocoding and processing.

Name

• What is it? The name of the production location. This is a required data point.
• OS Hub accepts production locations throughout all tiers of the supply chain, but does not accept home addresses. If you have an entity that is a person's name and address without a registered business, please do not submit it to Open Supply Hub.

Address

• What is it? The street address of the production location. This is a required data point.
• Please include cities and zip/postal codes in the address cell, if you have them.
• Remove P.O. Box and Police Station Data: Some facility addresses will include details about a P.O. Box (PO) or local police station (PS). These details may disrupt the geocoding process and it is best practice to remove them from your address field. This will primarily affect facilities located in India.

Multiple Entries in a Cell:

For the next two data points: If you are uploading multiple entries in one cell (like multiple product types), those entries must be separated by a comma OR vertical bar. For example: if entering pants and socks as product types for a facility, enter them as: “pants, socks” or “pants|socks.”

For sector, facility type, and processing type, there is a set taxonomy that OS Hub uses to process data. Some of the values in these taxonomies contain commas. For example, “Printing, Product Dyeing and Laundering” is both a facility type and a processing type in the OS Hub taxonomy. For these values, the data will be treated as one value and will not be separated based on commas.

Sector/Product Type

• What is it? This cell defines the product(s) or component(s) the contributor knows to be produced at the location and/or the sector the product(s) or component(s) are produced for. This is an optional but highly recommended data point, as OS Hub is frequently searched and filtered by Sector as a starting point.
• Open Supply Hub has a set list of supported sector values; any values uploaded in the sector_product_type field that match values on the OS Hub sector list will be listed under the sector heading on facility profile pages. All other values uploaded in the sector_product_type field will be listed as product type values. There can be multiple sector values and multiple product type values uploaded for each production location listed in the same cell. Remember that you must use a comma or the vertical bar character (“|”) to separate discrete values when uploading. In the case where multiple values are uploaded without proper formatting, our team may reject your list and ask that you re-upload with correctly formatted fields.
• All production locations without a value matching one of the identified sector values will be assigned the value of ‘Unspecified’ for sector. Note that our team will be routinely updating the list of sector values and the logic for this field as new data is uploaded. As OS Hub expands, and the system’s understanding of sector and product type relationships improves, new versions of the algorithm and underlying display logic will be released to better reflect this understanding.

Facility Type/Processing Type

• What is it? This cell defines the activities that occur at this production location, from a more granular level (processing type), to higher level categories/definitions (facility type). This is an optional data point.
• For apparel facilities: Please consult our Facility Type Taxonomy. In this cell, you may include all processing activities that you have confirmed occur at a particular facility, which will appear as the Processing Types for each facility in OS Hub. OS Hub then sorts those values into searchable Facility Type categories, which will appear as the Facility Type in OS Hub.
• For non-apparel facilities: In the initial release of OS Hub, there are no defined values for processing type and facility type for facilities outside of the apparel sector. As more data is collected for non-apparel sectors, the logic for these fields will be built out to behave as they do for apparel facilities. You are welcome to submit any processing type data you have for your facilities.

Number of Workers

• What is it? The number of people working at the production location. This is an optional data point.
• Raw values or ranges are accepted and then automatically sorted into larger categories for front-end searches of OS Hub.

Parent Company

• What is it? If applicable, the company or manufacturing group which owns the production location. This is an optional data point.
• If you do not know the Parent Company of a facility, you can leave that column/cell blank.

Example Data: Before and After

Want an example to follow? Here's a quick sample of how to resolve some of the most common formatting issues submitted to OS Hub.

Dealing with particularly messy data or not enough time to get it ready to share?

The OS Hub team is happy to clean, format, and standardize your supply chain data for you, to increase its quality and interoperability overall, as well as get it ready for upload to OS Hub.

Uploading your data

Once you have prepared your file(s), according to the above instructions. Move on to uploading your data.

Have questions?

First, check out our FAQs page - we may have already answered your question! If you can't find what you need there, please reach out to support@opensupplyhub.org and we are happy to assist you. We look forward to seeing your data in Open Supply Hub!