“At its most basic level, the core logic of blockchains means that no piece of inventory can exist in the same place twice.”- Paul Brody (EY Global Innovation Blockchain Leader)

Nearly all of the world’s leading Custom Blockchain Development companies run computerized enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management software and supply chain has become complicated. Friction in the supply chain is a huge problem.

Blockchain could be the solution to many of these issues. This recent growing technology is what drives Bitcoin and other so-called cryptocurrencies.

Supply Chain Current Use-Case

Current supply chain process is not transparent and accountable. End users do not have any idea that where their product manufactured and from what stages it has been through. Validity of the product can’t be checked which sometimes lead to poor quality products and increases the chance of returning the product or end user has to suffer with what is provided.

Supply chains these days are broken in various ways. Supply chains were relatively simple years back but now they have grown so much. A huge amount of manufacturing is done is China and thus the supply chains are globalized and are very complex. Customers or buyers cannot truly know the value of products as there is no transparency in the system. In addition, it gets extremely difficult to check for any illegal or unethical practices in the supply chain. This can be highly inefficient and customer may not get the product as per the price paid.

In addition, a centralized database can be an easy target for the hackers. These systems are vulnerable to cyberattacks and data can be altered by the agent acting in bad faith. There needs to be something that can prevent users from altering the data and the hackers to hack. The ability to trace back is much needed as products can be from unknown or undesired sources. (Deep Dive: Blockchain Mini-Series — Retail Applications, n.d.)

Current state and Future State (Smart Contracts: 12 Use Cases For Business And Beyond, 2018)

Current and Future states can be seen in the figure where Blockchain comes in and manages to solve almost all issues that a user face in terms of supply chain.

Supply chain with Blockchain

Blockchain helps in keeping the database distributed and much more secured as only intended users can see the details by decrypting with their keys. Blockchain makes the whole process transparent so that end user can see and verify the quality of product they get in return. Each phase can be seen from where the product has been through.

Everledger has already taken all of its diamond supply chain on Blockchain that has saved a lot of insurers’ money and has made the whole process transparent. Now the buyer can check the complete history of the diamond from its origination until now.

Frauds and errors will be reduced and identification of issues will turn up quickly. Also, trust between customer and partner can be increased and delays caused due to paper works can be avoided.

End to End Blockchain enabled Supply chain part 1 (Food You Trust_ How Blockchain Will Reinvent the Supply Chain, n.d.)

Here is the chicken selling Blockchain based example. It contains all the history of the chicken. First, Supplier will update the data related to chicken like the specifications of it and will tag chicken with RFID chip so that it can be identified uniquely. Next, it goes to the producer and producer cuts the chicken according to the need and adds QR code to packaging. Then Distributor receives notifications about the chicken produced and chooses the one that is more common among customers.

End to End Blockchain enabled Supply chain part 2 (Food You Trust_ How Blockchain Will Reinvent the Supply Chain, n.d.)

The product is then delivered to a truck that will share it with the retailers and has information on how to store the product. Retailer will update the record and will provide an application to the final customer so that they can check the origin, ageing, duration, etc. of the product. Store has full transparency on delivery time. At last, customers scan the QR code via the application and can get all the information related to it.