OM Forum—Distributed Ledgers and Operations: What Operations Management Researchers Should Know About Blockchain Technology

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Babich ◽  
Gilles Hilary
Keyword(s):  
Inventory Management ◽  
Operations Management ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Research Themes ◽  
Research Problems ◽  
Managerial Implications

Problem definition: Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology. While it has grown in prominence, its full potential and possible downsides are not fully understood yet, especially with respect to operations management (OM). Academic/practical relevance: This article fills this gap. Methodology: After briefly reviewing the technical foundations, we explore multiple business and policy aspects. Results: We identify five key strengths, the corresponding five main weaknesses, and three research themes of applying blockchain technology to OM. The key strengths are (1) visibility, (2) aggregation, (3) validation, (4) automation, and (5) resiliency. The corresponding weaknesses are (1) lack of privacy, (2) lack of standardization, (3) garbage in, garbage out, (4) black box effect, and (5) inefficiency. The three research themes are (1) information, (2) automation, and (3) tokenization. Managerial implications: We illustrate these research themes with multiple promising research problems, ranging from classical inventory management, to new areas of ethical OM, and to questions of industrial organization.

scholarly journals Distributed Interoperable Records: The Key to Better Supply Chain Management

Computers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Annegret Henninger ◽  
Atefeh Mashatan
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Supply Chain Management ◽  
Gap Analysis ◽  
Global Supply Chain ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Chain Management ◽  
Current State ◽  
Future State ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology

The global supply chain is a network of interconnected processes that create, use, and exchange records, but which were not designed to interact with one another. As such, the key to unlocking the full potential of supply chain management (SCM) technologies is achieving interoperability across participating records systems and networks. We review existing research and solutions using distributed ledger technology (DLT) and provide a survey of its current state of practice. We additionally propose a holistic solution: a DLT-based interoperable future state that could enable the interoperable, efficient, reliable, and secure exchange of records with integrity. Finally, we provide a gap analysis between our proposed future state and the current state, which also serves as a gap analysis for many fractional DLT-based SCM solutions and research.

Blockchain Technology as a Bridging Infrastructure Among Formal, Non-Formal, and Informal Learning Processes

2021 ◽  
pp. 959-970
Author(s):  
Aras Bozkurt ◽  
Hasan Ucar
Keyword(s):  
Informal Learning ◽  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Educational Experiences ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Web 3.0 ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Educational Processes ◽  
Formal And Informal Learning

Blockchain is an online decentralized and distributed ledger technology that has the ability to keep and track records in a safe, verifiable, and transparent manner. More significantly, it has an infrastructure that is compatible with Web 3.0, which offers great potential for lifelong learning. This chapter explains the different modalities of learning (formal, non-formal, informal), blockchain technology, and its current use in educational processes. Based on the findings, the authors suggest that blockchain technology can be used to connect and interlink different educational experiences that occur in different educational modalities, enabling us to evaluate educational processes holistically and thus promote lifelong learning through the use of cutting-edge technologies.

Pricing and Matching with Forward-Looking Buyers and Sellers

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 717-734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiwei Chen ◽  
Ming Hu
Keyword(s):  
Operations Management ◽  
Sharing Economy ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Fixed Base ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
Dynamic Stochastic ◽  
Bid Prices ◽  
Supply Costs ◽  
Heuristic Policy ◽  
Forward Looking

Problem definition: We study a dynamic market over a finite horizon for a single product or service in which buyers with private valuations and sellers with private supply costs arrive following Poisson processes. A single market-making intermediary decides dynamically on the ask and bid prices that will be posted to buyers and sellers, respectively, and on the matching decisions after buyers and sellers agree to buy and sell. Buyers and sellers can wait strategically for better prices after they arrive. Academic/practical relevance: This problem is motivated by the emerging sharing economy and directly speaks to the core of operations management that is about matching supply with demand. Methodology: The dynamic, stochastic, and game-theoretic nature makes the problem intractable. We employ the mechanism-design methodology to establish a tractable upper bound on the optimal profit, which motivates a simple heuristic policy. Results: Our heuristic policy is: fixed ask and bid prices plus price adjustments as compensation for waiting costs, in conjunction with the greedy matching policy on a first-come-first-served basis. These fixed base prices balance demand and supply in expectation and can be computed efficiently. The waiting-compensated price processes are time-dependent and tend to have opposite trends at the beginning and end of the horizon. Under this heuristic policy, forward-looking buyers and sellers behave myopically. This policy is shown to be asymptotically optimal. Managerial implications: Our results suggest that the intermediary might not lose much optimality by maintaining stable prices unless the underlying market conditions have significantly changed, not to mention that frequent surge pricing may antagonize riders and induce riders and drivers to behave strategically in ways that are hard to account for with traditional pricing models.

Incentivized Actions in Freemium Games

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lifei Sheng ◽  
Christopher Thomas Ryan ◽  
Mahesh Nagarajan ◽  
Yuan Cheng ◽  
Chunyang Tong
Keyword(s):  
Operations Management ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Problem Definition ◽  
Data Set ◽  
New Class ◽  
Recent Innovation ◽  
Markov Decision ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
Operational Issues ◽  
Data Driven Decisions

Problem definition: Games are the fastest-growing sector of the entertainment industry. Freemium games are the fastest-growing segment within games. The concept behind freemium is to attract large pools of players, many of whom will never spend money on the game. When game publishers cannot earn directly from the pockets of consumers, they employ other revenue-generating content, such as advertising. Players can become irritated by revenue-generating content. A recent innovation is to offer incentives for players to interact with such content, such as clicking an ad or watching a video. These are termed incentivized (incented) actions. We study the optimal deployment of incented actions. Academic/practical relevance: Removing or adding incented actions can essentially be done in real-time. Accordingly, the deployment of incented actions is a tactical, operational question for game designers. Methodology: We model the deployment problem as a Markov decision process (MDP). We study the performance of simple policies, as well as the structure of optimal policies. We use a proprietary data set to calibrate our MDP and derive insights. Results: Cannibalization—the degree to which incented actions distract players from making in-app purchases—is the key parameter for determining how to deploy incented actions. If cannibalization is sufficiently high, it is never optimal to offer incented actions. If cannibalization is sufficiently low, it is always optimal to offer. We find sufficient conditions for the optimality of threshold strategies that offer incented actions to low-engagement users and later remove them once a player is sufficiently engaged. Managerial implications: This research introduces operations management academics to a new class of operational issues in the games industry. Managers in the games industry can gain insights into when incentivized actions can be more or less effective. Game designers can use our MDP model to make data-driven decisions for deploying incented actions.

scholarly journals RBI Distributed Ledger Technology and Blockchain - A Future of Decentralized India

2020 ◽  
pp. 227-237
Author(s):  
Bhuvana R. ◽  
P. S. Aithal
Keyword(s):  
Central Bank ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Central Banking ◽  
Indian Government ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Monetary Economy

Despite various countries getting hands-on technology such as blockchain for banking, transaction, and multiple benefits, a developing country such as India must use these technologies because of the advantages it provides in order to keep pace. In the age of digital currencies and new emerging technologies, central banking is a fast-growing topic in the monetary economy. Cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and distributed Ledger technologies appear to be feasible rivals to Fiat Currency central bank. Blockchain technology's influence behind Cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies have the ability to boost payments and operations by central banks and serve as a forum from which central banks could Perhaps launch their own digital currencies. RBI Indian central bank is no less important when it comes to technology that would pave the way for the new economy, enriched with technology-centric growth momentum, by increasing support from India's reserve bank and the Indian government for innovation and integrating technologies through regulatory sandboxes and various other systems. This article illustrates distributed ledger technology in the Indian context. The secondary data were obtained from various scholarly journals and websites. We have analysed distributed ledger technology, India’s move towards learning new technologies, different central banks distributed ledger project and examined blockchain technology in the Indian market using the SWOC framework as a research case study.

scholarly journals Novel Payment Wallet Management with Blockchain Based Cryptocurrency

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2S4) ◽  
pp. 228-233
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Authority ◽  
Payment Systems ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Payments System ◽  
Enterprise Technology ◽  
Business Application ◽  
The World ◽  
Actual Life

Blockchain for business is a new concept which enables many industries and organizations to implement even the basic of systems on foundation of blockchain technology. Using this technology, our goal is to develop a payments system that enables transfer of funds for a monetary transaction between two parties. Hyperledger is an open source community oriented effort which was made to propel cross-industry blockchain advances that were available. The Linux Foundation has it. It has partners from everywhere throughout the world , at a worldwide dimension and incorporates ventures like funding, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, assembling and Technology. Using Blockchain for Enterprise technology, we are going to develop a new payments system that makes use of regulated cryptocurrency. Using this system, we want to create a new cryptocurrency specific to the payment portal for people to buy, sell and pay or earn rewards using this cryptocurrency. This system will majorly consist of participants and admins that will be divided based on the certificates assigned to every participant. Our implementation involves. using the fabric for creating a payment system run on the backend of blockchain technology. This will involve having a regulatory authority to maintain the cryptocurrency, ledger and authenticity of the users. Theoretically, the blockchain technology maintains anonymity for transactions. It uses a distributed ledger to record transactions for people to be able to make secure transactions without any repercussions. Blockchain for Enterprise implements Blockchain technology by using concepts like Trust, Privacy and Smart contracts in addition to the distributed ledger to create an industry friendly Blockchain business application. Blockchain is a rapidly growing field with multiple implementations which can be explored not just on anonymity but also on actual life implementations. Distributed ledger technology is applied to the payment systems. Cryptocurrency would now not only be used for anonymous transactions but also for regular day to day transactions.

Blockchain Introduced

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-59
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
History Of

This chapter provides an introductory explanation of Blockchain technology and how it works, concentrating on its potential for social impact. It describes the history of the development of Blockchain, which is a form of distributed ledger technology.

Use of blockchain in designing smart city

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 695-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Surbhi Dewan ◽  
Latika Singh
Keyword(s):  
Smart Cities ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Decentralized System ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Wide Range

PurposeA blockchain is a shared distributed ledger technology that stores the information of every transaction in the network. The blockchain has emerged with a huge diversity of applications not only in the economic but in the non-economical domain as well. Blockchain technology promises to provide a wide range of solutions to the problems faced during implementation of smart cities. It has the potential to build smart contracts more secure, thus eliminating the need for centralized authority.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents a proof-of-concept for a use case that uses an Ethereum platform to build a blockchain network to buy, sell or rent a property.FindingsThe findings of this study provide an opportunity to create novel decentralized scalable solutions to develop smart cities by enabling paperless transactions. There are enormous opportunities in this distributed ledger technology which will bring a revolutionary change in upcoming years.Originality/valueThe concept of blockchain along with smart contracts can be used as a promising technology for sharing services which is a common requirement in smart cities. All the blockchain transactions are stored in decentralized shared database. The transaction recorded in decentralized system is immutable, it cannot be altered and hence chance of forgery is negligible.

scholarly journals Using RFID to identify smart products on a blockchain enabled production network

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Sándor Csikós ◽  
György Czifra ◽  
József Sárosi
Keyword(s):  
Production System ◽  
Industry 4.0 ◽  
Distributed Database ◽  
Production Network ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Current State ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Smart Products ◽  
New Challenges

Industry 4.0 requires the cooperation of several technologies. The intersections of these technologies present us with new challenges. One of these challenges is identification, since we have to identify all the items that are on the network that do work and those that are worked upon. If we fail to identify one of these items the network is presented with an unidentified potentially malicious device or a misidentified product which can cause production to halt. Blockchains or otherwise known as Distributed Ledger Technology, DLT for short is a technology that builds upon the current bookkeeping paradigm and expands it in a decentralized direction. This however can be used in more than just banking since it is essentially a distributed database that has memory of past events not just the current state. By using a blockchain based distributed database to hold processing details and using RFID-s as keys to certain entries in the database it is possible to build a tamper proof production system that can handle the challenges of industry 4.0. It may also be possible to use blockchain technology as a form of digital paper trail that can be used to validate messages sent to the nodes of the system.

scholarly journals Sustainable Public Spending Through Blockchain

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 317
Author(s):  
Judit Glavanits
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Financial Markets ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
The State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Currency ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Distributed Ledger ◽  
Distributed Ledger Technology ◽  
Industrial Use

Blockchain technology and its industrial use cases can be detected worldwide. It is time for the state to think about the blockchain as an opportunity to reduce costs and build trust in the public spending. The paper and the presentation give an overview on how the state can apply the distributed ledger technology (DLT) and blockchain technology in the public administration: there are several countries with best practices already, and even more are in the introduction phase of opening to Industry 4.0 in the public services as well. On the field of FinTech area the state has great responsibility to regulate (or at least define) the phenomena of cryptocurrencies, that is already in use for more than 10 years now without any responsible governmental acts. Within this topic the Central Bank Digital Currency projects are also discussed in the paper, which are supported by IMF, and declared as the next natural step forward on financial markets. Keywords: blockchain, DLT, SDG, public spending

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