A Blockchain-Based Secure Radio Frequency Identification Ownership Transfer Protocol

Supply chain management (SCM) governance is the streamline of the IoT product life cycle from its production to delivery. Integrating blockchain with supply chain management is essential to ensure end-to-end tracking, trustiness between manufacturers and customers, fraud and counterfeit elimination, and customizing administrative costs and paperwork. This paper proposes an RFID ownership transfer protocol with the help of zk-SNARKs (Zero Knowledge-Succinct Noninteractive Arguments of Knowledge) using Ethereum blockchain. When the owner performs RFID transfer, the transferred information will be recorded on the blockchain using smart contracts. When using a smart contract to transfer ownership on the Ethereum blockchain, because the content on the blockchain will not be tampered with, all accounts in the Ethereum can view the transfer results and verify them. The privacy of the supply chain is attained by generating the proof of product code via zk-SNARKs algorithm. This algorithm also enhances the scalability of the supply chain system by creating a trusted setup in off-chain mode.

Medicines and vaccines supply chains challenges in Nigeria: a scoping review

Background Medicines and vaccines supply chains represent critical systems for realising one of the major targets of the United Nations’ third Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—access to safe, effective, quality, and affordable essential medicines and vaccines, for all. However, evidence suggests the system is confronted with several challenges in many low-medium income countries, including Nigeria. This scoping review aims to summarize the available evidence on the challenges of medicines and vaccines supply chain system in Nigeria. Results We searched relevant databases including Scopus and Web of Science for studies published between January 2005 and August 2020 on the challenges associated with medicines and vaccines supply chain systems in Nigeria. Our findings implicate several factors including difficulty with medicines or vaccines selection, procurement, distribution, and inventory management. Others included poor storage infrastructure, financial constraints, insecurity, transportation challenges, inadequate human resources, weak, or poorly implemented policies. These challenges mostly resulted in stock-outs of essential medicines which notably got worsened during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion Our study is a wake-up call on the need to prioritise the critical sector of the supply chain systems for medicines and vaccines in Nigeria. Effective implementation of existing policies, improved security, strengthening of the health system through adequate budgetary allocations, and provision of infrastructure including regular availability of electricity are keys to surmounting the challenges and improving access to medicines or vaccines in Nigeria.

Blockchain Technology Meets Traceability in Fruit Supply Chain Management: A Systematic Review

Fruits are easily damaged, therefore, a tracing system is needed to ensure the commodity is well received by consumers. This study is a systematic review aims to identify areas where the fruits traceability provides the most value for supply chain management and to develop elements of a future research agenda for the fruits traceability in supply chain management. PRISMA or Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses is used to help the systematic literature review. The result showed thad there are several values ​​in applying traceability to the fruit supply chain, such as traceability guarantees the quality of fruit in the supply chain, traceability protects from fraud. Traceability will help increase consumer confidence in food safety, particularly on fruit. Blockchain technology is a promosing technology for a traceability system in industry and can be used successfully, by modifying the supply chain system and meeting the limitations first.

Online-Retail Supply Chain Optimization with Credit Period and Selling Price-Dependent Demand

Credit payment strategies have been implemented widely in the online retail industry. This work studies an online-retail supply chain involving credit period and selling price-dependent demands. The participants of the supply chain form a Stackelberg game where the supplier as a follower sells products to the customers through an online platform provider, who as a leader provides a credit period to customers and charges the supplier based on the quantity of goods sold. We study and compare the supply chains when the online platform provider adopts the cash payment and credit payment strategies, respectively, to investigate the effects of the credit period, the selling price and the default risk on supply chain system performance. We also investigate these supply chains under both the centralized and decentralized settings and provide an example to illustrate a simple allocation mechanism to coordinate the decentralized supply chain. Finally, an extension of the supply chain with credit payment is given.

Demand Allocation and Profit Sharing to Improve Salt Farmer’s Revenue: A Cooperative Game Approach

The main problem of the salt supply chain system is the oligopoly market structure dominated by middlemen which reduces the bargaining power of farmers. It has, however, been discovered that vertical collaboration (farmers to cooperatives) and horizontal collaboration (farmers to farmers) models have the ability to increase farmers' revenue. Therefore, this research was conducted to determine the effect of both horizontal and vertical collaboration models on the salt supply chain system with the expectation to increase farmers' revenue. This involved the application of the cooperative game theory with Shapley's value used as the basis for decision making. The result showed that the collaboration of stakeholders in the salt supply chain system has the ability to increase farmers' revenue, especially when they sell a maximum of 20% of their products through cooperatives and the rest through middlemen. This means the existence of farmers as cooperative members has a positive impact as observed in the revenue increment. Therefore, it is recommended that cooperatives improve their functions and roles as providers of savings and loans and market seekers, determine the appropriate prices for salt, and improve the quality of the products produced by their members. Moreover, a collaboration between farmers is mutually beneficial and this means efforts should be made to ensure cooperation, especially for small farmers.

Ecodesign Strategy for Demand-Oriented Electrical and Electronic Products

Governments of various countries have formulated relevant EPR environmental regulations for environmental pollution caused by electrical and electronic products, and enterprises mainly respond to this regulation through product ecodesign strategies. In view of this, this paper takes a three-stage supply chain system composed of a manufacturer, a retailer and a third-party recycler as the research object, and develops a demand-oriented product ecodesign strategy for five scenarios under different environmental regulations, including eco-input subsidy, sales subsidy, consumption subsidy and recycling subsidy. This study finds that the manufacturer does not actively engage in product ecodesign if the government does not implement subsidy policies; when the government implements subsidy policies such as eco-input subsidy, sales subsidy, or consumption subsidy, the manufacturer will design a high-level ecological product. However, under the recycling subsidy policy, the manufacturer will design a low-level ecological product. These results suggest that different subsidy policies may lead to different eco-product strategies of the manufacturer. In particular, the recycling subsidy policy can encourage a recycler to recycle actively, thus reducing the environmental pollution cost of a manufacturer, but the manufacturer is reluctant to improve the ecological level of the finished product.

Analysis of Security Criteria for IoT-Based Supply Chain: A Case Study of FMCG Industries

Purpose: In supply chains, creating a secure space for data production, sending, storing, and analysis has always been a critical issue. The main goal of this research was to evaluate the importance of various security criteria in an intelligent supply chain system. Methodology: The main data collection method was the expert survey. Experts validated the security criteria and sub-criteria. Then, the importance of these criteria was evaluated using the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method. Findings: The results revealed that reliability and privacy with their sub-criteria were the most important ones among the obtained security criteria for IoT-based supply chain management. Practical implications: The research results can provide valuable insight for supply chains’ decision-makers. The findings can also be a good reference point for researchers who work on the IoT-based supply chain concept in other countries and sectors. Research limitations: Limitations of this study are the purposive sampling method and the limited scope of studied companies and sectors. Therefore, the article provides initial insight on the matter. Originality: The study presents the research problem from a new perspective and gives possible solutions for IoT-based supply chain management.

Evaluating Pallet Investment Strategy Using Fuzzy Analytic Network Processes: A Case in Chinese Chain Supermarkets

Presently in Chinese chain supermarkets, many enterprises have built automatic equipment and information facilities in the logistics center of their supply chain systems. Modern logistics technology and equipment largely depend on the resource integration of each role in the chain (such as suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers), especially logistics facilities and equipment resources, to realize the circulation of products. The pallet, which is an indispensable basic tool for a supply chain system in the process of product circulation, is most often used in the handling, stacking, storage, and transportation of products. The process of building automation and informationization in the supply chain system of Chinese supermarket chains requires the solving of the problems of cost and sharing pallets in logistics operations. Large-scale enterprises often spend millions of dollars on investment, the failure of which can cause significant harm to the enterprise. Therefore, the authors of this paper adopted the fuzzy analytic network process (FANP), combining fuzzy and ANP models to evaluate our studied case. We utilized an actual case as the research object to resolve the important decisions regarding pallet resource sharing investment in the supply chain system. Importantly, it is expected that the proposed method can provide an important reference standard or a new idea for decision makers in the chain supermarket industry or related industries.