Instead of looking at a supplier to decide how they
should rank, Panjiva looks at the people buying from
those suppliers. The network amongst suppliers and
buyers gives a much more truthful representation of what
a supplier is really good at building than purely
analyzing the suppliers themselves.
The idea is that you'd probably trust the guy who actually sold 1,000 dresses to Macys more than the guy who just says they're a great dress manufacturer.
Brilliant idea, but how are they going to harvest the shipping data - I don't believe b2b trading is publicly available.
Like Apple for instance, I'm sure they have NDA's for all their suppliers. Companies probably treat this as trade secrets so competitors can't source from the same factory they are buying from.