Efficient Onboarding and Management of Members in Permissioned Blockchain Networks Utilizing TLS Certificates

Consortia blockchain networks face the issue of expanding their systems to new members. Onboarding processes are often cumbersome, as they require identifying the new participant, manually setting up rights, exchanging key material, and adding information about the new member to the consensus smart contract. Besides that, these processes are time-consuming and scale poorly. Identifying the members might be faulty as the pre-existing members might be deceived by malicious parties claiming to be someone else. This paper proposes a novel methodology to allow the onboarding of new parties without time-intensive off-chain processes. We establish identities of new consortia members by utilizing TLS certificates bound to publicly known domain names. With this identity scheme in place, the network operators can define rules such as only specific parties are allowed to join the network, e.g., only owners of *.edu domains. This methodology scales well, provides for extensive ruling and monitoring, and helps consortia blockchains to grow faster.

Open Innovations in Supply Chain Relationships: Analysis of a Creative Sector

The work focuses on the development of innovative supply relationships that allow the use of openness innovations. At the same time, firms that want to implement these innovations must redesign their production processes. The research is based on an in-depth study of 10 business cases of medium-sized firms belonging to a clothing sub-sector, that of knitwear. The findings have important managerial implications considering that the innovative supply chain processes, in which a leading role is assumed by firms operating in the so-called traditional manufacturing sectors, generate an increase in flexibility of the entire supply chain.

Improving Opportunities in Healthcare Supply Chain Processes via the Internet of Things and Blockchain Technology

Despite key advances in healthcare informatics and management, little progress to address supply chain process-related problems has been made to date. Specifically, key healthcare supply chain processes include product recalls, monitoring of product supply shortages, expiration, and counterfeits. Implementing and executing these processes in a trusted, secure, efficient, globally accessible and traceable manner is challenging due to the fragmented nature of the healthcare supply chain, which is prone to systemic errors and redundant efforts that may compromise patient safety and impact health outcomes adversely. Blockchain, combined with the Internet of things (IoT), is an emerging technology that can offer a practical solution to these challenges. Accordingly, IoT blockchain offers a superior way to track and trace products via a peer-to-peer distributed, secure, and shared ledger of the blockchain network. This article highlights key challenges related to healthcare supply chains, and illustrates how IoT blockchain technologies can play a role in overcoming these challenges now and in the near future.

Supply Chain Sustainability in Food and Beverage Industry

Green supply chain management (GSCM) is defined as the delivery of various products and services from the different manufacturers, suppliers, and end customers through the information flow in terms of environment. Moreover, unlike the conventional supply chain processes, green supply chain process is engaged in the implementation of various environment friendly ideas as well as strategies in it. GSCM includes different ways to amend the negative environmental impacts along with the improvement in efficiency, increased profitability and costs. In today's scenario, the consumers are shifting their preferences from unsustainable products to sustainable food products, thereby opting green for the same. This chapter emphasizes the necessities of the green supply chain processes as well as the strategies adopted by the firms, particularly in India in the food and beverage industry. The chapter focuses on the trends, impacts, challenges, and opportunities of GSCM.