More recently, in our blog we covered the Batch Tracing Template. The main reason of a batch tracing implementation is to guarantee safety and reliability in the food supply chain. The Batch Tracing Template defines a basic integration workflow which can be customized visually. All that’s needed are the Smart Contracts for a specific blockchain, which are then generated automatically through the Framework.

Now we move onto the another template which will be offered through the Unibright Framework; The Asset Lifecycle Template. Within any regulated industry that offers complex products (e.g. airline industry, luxury goods, pharmaceuticals etc.), these products are comprised of thousands of different parts and therefore it is crucial to know the provenance of such parts. This is in order to assure that they have the right specifications and that they are not counterfeit. In addition, many of these parts are so-called “tracked items”. Not only their provenance, but the entire maintenance history of these parts needs to be transparent.

Today, the participants in an asset’s lifecycle each have their own disparate systems for managing assets. Consequently, it’s quite difficult to establish and maintain a single version of the truth when looking at that asset’s entire lifecycle. Often, these records can be incomplete or still non-digitized, and communication between the different participants is often conducted on paper, through the email, or even verbally over the phone. The lack of standardization leads to limited traceability and the cost for compliance, can be very high.

Imagine if all the participants submitted a transcript of the transactions into a purpose-specific, distributed ledger, to which only authorized participants would have access.

The manufacturer of the product would initially start the blockchain for the asset, and each participant would add relevant information to it. Distributors would let the participants within the chain know that the asset was transported from point A to point B, while the system operator would register other characteristics about the parts which would be used for the product’s making (e.g. if the final manufacturer is a luxury bag brand, then information about the leather’s source and temperature throughout the transport). Using the blockchain for this asset management scenario would give you a verifiable, traceable, and trustworthy history of the asset’s lifecycle in real-time. Each individual participant in the chain still has the features and benefits of their own business applications to run their business.

As a result the potential benefits of the blockchain for the participants would be: