Blockchain Technology for Supply Chain Traceability, Transparency and Data Provenance

Author(s):  
Suruchi Mann ◽  
Vidyasagar Potdar ◽  
Raj Shekhar Gajavilli ◽  
Anulipt Chandan
Author(s):  
Kevin A. Clauson ◽  
Elizabeth A. Breeden ◽  
Cameron Davidson ◽  
Timothy K. Mackey

Background: Effective supply chain management is a challenge in every sector, but in healthcare there is added complexity and risk as a compromised supply chain in healthcare can directly impact patient safety and health outcomes. One potential solution for improving security, integrity, data provenance, and functionality of the health supply chain is blockchain technology. Objectives: Provide an overview of the opportunities and challenges associated with blockchain adoption and deployment for the health supply chain, with a focus on the pharmaceutical supply, medical device and supplies, Internet of Healthy Things (IoHT), and public health sectors. Methods: A narrative review was conducted of the academic literature, grey literature, and industry publications, in addition to identifying and characterizing select stakeholders engaged in exploring blockchain solutions for the health supply chain. Results: Critical challenges in protecting the integrity of the health supply chain appear well suited for adoption of blockchain technology. Use cases are emerging, including using blockchain to combat counterfeit medicines, securing medical devices, optimizing functionality of IoHT, and improving the public health supply chain. Despite these clear opportunities, most blockchain initiatives remain in proof-of-concept or pilot phase. Conclusion: Blockchain technology has the unrealized promise to help improve the health supply chain, but further study, evaluation and alignment with policy mechanisms is needed. Keywords: Blockchain, Distributed Ledger, Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical, Supply chain  


Blockchain technology as an infrastructure allows an innovational platform for a new transparent and decentralized transaction mechanism for different type of industries and businesses. Different attributes of blockchain technology increase trust through traceability and transparency ability of goods, data and financial resources within any transaction. Regardless of initial uncertainty about this technology, government and many major enterprises and firms have recently examined the adoption and improvement of this technology in several areas of applications, from social, legal and finance industries to manufacturing, design and supply-chain networks. An interesting research problem in this new era is that of determining provenance. At present, goods which are produced and transported using complicated medium supply chains, in this type of supply chain it is impossible to evaluate the provenance of physical goods. We have an interest in the blockchain as there are numerous favored use cases of blockchain especially for provenance tracking. In this paper we review the basics features of the blockchain along with its type like permission less and permissioned blockchain. Then discussed the need of provenance of assets in supplychain as it increase the trust of the customer and proposed a process and architecture for providing the data provenance in supply chain with blockchain using smart contract.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raja Wasim Ahmad ◽  
Khaled Salah ◽  
Raja Jayaraman ◽  
Ibrar Yaqoob ◽  
Mohammed Omar

Today's systems, approaches, and technologies leveraged for managing oil and gas supply chain operations fall short in providing operational transparency, traceability, audit, security, and trusted data provenance features. Also, a large portion of the existing systems is centralized, manual, and highly disintegrated which make them vulnerable to manipulation and the single point of failure problem. In this survey, we explore the potential opportunities and applications of blockchain technology in managing the exploration, production, and supply chain and logistics operations in the oil and gas industry as it can offer traceability, immutability, transparency, and audit features in a decentralized, trusted, and secure manner. We discuss state-of-the-art blockchain-based schemes, research projects, business initiatives, and case studies to highlight the practicability of blockchain in the oil and gas industry. We present the potential opportunities brought about by blockchain technology in various use cases and application scenarios. We introduce several systems that leverage blockchain-based smart contracts to automate the important services in terms of tracking and tracing of petroleum products, protection of international trade documents, and coordination of purchasing and bidding activities for granting oil exploration rights to petroleum exploration and development companies. Finally, we present open challenges acting as future research directions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Neo C. K. Yiu

An interesting research problem in the supply chain industry is evaluating and determining the provenance of physical goods—demonstrating the authenticity of luxury goods such as bottled wine. However, many supply chain systems and networks have been built and implemented with centralized system architecture, relying on centralized authorities or any form of intermediary, and leading to issues such as single-point processing, storage and failure, which could be susceptible to malicious modifications to product records or various potential attacks to system components by dishonest participant nodes traversing along the supply chain. Blockchain technology has evolved from merely being a decentralized, distributed and immutable ledger of cryptocurrency transactions to a programmable interactive environment for building decentralized and reliable applications addressing different use-cases and existing problems in the world. In this research, with a chosen research method of proof-by-demonstration, the Decentralized NFC-Enabled Anti-Counterfeiting System (dNAS) is proposed and developed, decentralizing a legacy anti-counterfeiting system of the supply-chain industry using Blockchain technology to facilitate trustworthy data provenance retrieval, verification and management, as well as strengthening the capability of the product’s anti-counterfeiting and traceability qualities in the wine industry, with the capacity to further extend this to the supply chain industry as a whole. The proposed dNAS utilizes a decentralized blockchain network with a consensus protocol compatible with the concept of enterprise blockchain, programmable smart contracts and a distributed file storage system to develop a secure and immutable scientific-data provenance tracking and management platform on which provenance records, providing compelling properties of the data integrity of luxurious goods, are recorded, verified and validated automatically.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raja Wasim Ahmad ◽  
Khaled Salah ◽  
Raja Jayaraman ◽  
Ibrar Yaqoob ◽  
Mohammed Omar

Today's systems, approaches, and technologies leveraged for managing oil and gas supply chain operations fall short in providing operational transparency, traceability, audit, security, and trusted data provenance features. Also, a large portion of the existing systems is centralized, manual, and highly disintegrated which make them vulnerable to manipulation and the single point of failure problem. In this survey, we explore the potential opportunities and applications of blockchain technology in managing the exploration, production, and supply chain and logistics operations in the oil and gas industry as it can offer traceability, immutability, transparency, and audit features in a decentralized, trusted, and secure manner. We discuss state-of-the-art blockchain-based schemes, research projects, business initiatives, and case studies to highlight the practicability of blockchain in the oil and gas industry. We present the potential opportunities brought about by blockchain technology in various use cases and application scenarios. We introduce several systems that leverage blockchain-based smart contracts to automate the important services in terms of tracking and tracing of petroleum products, protection of international trade documents, and coordination of purchasing and bidding activities for granting oil exploration rights to petroleum exploration and development companies. Finally, we present open challenges acting as future research directions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 86
Author(s):  
Neo C. K. Yiu

Existing product anti-counterfeiting and traceability solutions across today’s internationally spanning supply chain networks are indeed developed and implemented with centralized system architecture relying on centralized authorities or intermediaries. Vulnerabilities of centralized product anti-counterfeiting solutions could possibly lead to system failure or susceptibility of malicious modifications performed on product records or various potential attacks to the system components by dishonest participant nodes traversing along the supply chain. Blockchain technology has progressed from simply being a use case of immutable ledger for cryptocurrency transactions, to a programmable interactive environment of developing decentralized and reliable applications addressing different use cases globally. Key areas of decentralization, fundamental system requirements, and feasible mechanisms of developing decentralized product anti-counterfeiting and traceability ecosystems utilizing blockchain technology are identified in this research, via a series of security analyses performed against solutions currently implemented in supply chain industry with centralized architecture. The decentralized solution will be a secure and immutable scientific data provenance tracking and management platform where provenance records, providing compelling properties on data integrity of luxurious goods, are recorded and verified automatically across the supply chain.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shivika Narang ◽  
Praphul Chandra ◽  
Shweta Jain ◽  
Narahari Y

The blockchain concept forms the backbone of a new wave technology that promises to be deployed extensively in a wide variety of industrial and societal applications. In this article, we present the scientific foundations and technical strengths of this technology. Our emphasis is on blockchains that go beyond the original application to digital currencies such as bitcoin. We focus on the blockchain data structure and its characteristics; distributed consensus and mining; and different types of blockchain architectures. We conclude with a section on applications in industrial and societal settings, elaborating upon a few applications such as land registry ledger, tamper-proof academic transcripts, crowdfunding, and a supply chain B2B platform. We discuss what we believe are the important challenges in deploying the blockchain technology successfully in real-world settings.


2019 ◽  
pp. 59-63
Author(s):  
G. V. Zubakov ◽  
O D. Protsenko ◽  
I. O. Protsenko

The presented study addresses the current problems in the implementation of the distributed ledger (blockchain) technology in supply chain management mechanisms in the context of the digital economy. Aim. The study aims to analyze the application of the blockchain technology in modern economic processes from the perspective of logistics.Tasks. The authors consider the possibility of using the blockchain technology in the supply chain management system and explore ways to use the findings of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) in the fieldof digital economy to organize information standardization processes within the supply chains of foreign and mutual trade.Methods. This study uses general scientific methods of cognition to examine approaches to the implementation of the blockchain technology in transport and logistics processes and to find opportunities for the implementation of smart contracts to ensure the traceability of the entire chain of commodity and information fl ws.Results. Implementation of the distributed ledger (blockchain) technology in the logistics processes of foreign and mutual trade increases the transparency of information fl ws and the speed of decisionmaking. This technology would allow the parties to negotiate directly, minimizing potential risks and the time required to approve a supply deal.Conclusions. The authors consider the possibility of using a systematic approach to the digitalization of transport and logistics processes and the subsequent standardization of information interaction at the B2B, B2G, and G2G levels, segmented by separate fields of transport and foreign trade and individual economic sectors. As a conclusion, the study assesses the prospects of the practical implementation of blockchain mechanisms in the creation of industrial platforms — digital platforms that provide integrated services for businesses and the government using a single window system.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 5307
Author(s):  
Ricardo Borges dos Santos ◽  
Nunzio Marco Torrisi ◽  
Rodrigo Palucci Pantoni

Every consumer’s buying decision at the supermarket influences food brands to make first party claims of sustainability and socially responsible farming methods on their agro-product labels. Fine wines are often subject to counterfeit along the supply chain to the consumer. This paper presents a method for efficient unrestricted publicity to third party certification (TPC) of plant agricultural products, starting at harvest, using smart contracts and blockchain tokens. The method is capable of providing economic incentives to the actors along the supply chain. A proof-of-concept using a modified Ethereum IGR token set of smart contracts using the ERC-1155 standard NFTs was deployed on the Rinkeby test net and evaluated. The main findings include (a) allowing immediate access to TPC by the public for any desired authority by using token smart contracts. (b) Food safety can be enhanced through TPC visible to consumers through mobile application and blockchain technology, thus reducing counterfeiting and green washing. (c) The framework is structured and maintained because participants obtain economical incentives thus leveraging it´s practical usage. In summary, this implementation of TPC broadcasting through tokens can improve transparency and sustainable conscientious consumer behaviour, thus enabling a more trustworthy supply chain transparency.


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