Outsourcing Manufacturing: Secure Price-Masking Mechanisms for Purchasing Component Parts

This paper develops and tests a privacy-preserving business process that supports the selection of a contract manufacturer by an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), and the determination of whether the OEM or the chosen contract manufacturer will procure each of the components to be used in the manufacture of the OEM's branded product. Our "secure price-masking (SPM)" technology contributes to procurement theory and practice in four significant ways: First, it preserves the privacy of every party's individual component prices. Second, SPM assures that the contract manufacturers will bid their own private purchase cost (i.e., not add a margin to their cost). Third, SPM is not invertible; i.e., none of the participants can "solve" for the private inputs of any other participant based on its own inputs and the outputs provided to it by SPM. Fourth, the posterior distribution of any other participant's private inputs is practically indistinguishable from its prior distribution. We also describe the results of a proof-of-concept implementation.