As blockchain technology gains traction, huge organizations and new businesses are investigating applications beyond the finance industry. Numerous firms are already testing blockchain technology to address a variety of demands. 5 Monograph – a 2014 business leverages blockchain technology to protect the sharing and working rights of digital material such as brand-sponsored material or video clips and facilitate income sharing among publishers, distributors, and media creators. Skuchain develops blockchain-based business-to-business trade and supply chain financing products for the eighteen trillion dollars of the global trade finance sector, characterized by diverse participants, including logistics providers, sellers, buyers, customs, banks, and third parties.
Blockchain-enabled supply chain innovations can generate enormous corporate value by boosting supply chain transparency, decreasing risk, and improving supply chain efficiency and management.
In the End-to-End means, we must consider supply chains from the standpoint of the end client. Consumer products companies, for example, would like to understand what is happening in the downstream end consumer market at the point of sale and the upstream side of a multi-tier supply chain. It is intricate and comprehensive, not limiting our search to a single company. Synchronization entails reacting to market developments. In the dynamic environment in which we all live, supply chains must respond to market changes and remain synced with the market.
This must be accomplished on multiple levels. For example, there must be strategic alignment — where do we manufacture, where do we store our inventory, how do we manage our transportation network, and how do we make or purchase decisions? Then, there’s mid-term alignment, or the synchronization of demand and supply in the short term, which is frequently referred to as integrated business planning. This includes being prepared to serve the market in the medium term and all short-term synchronization, order response, short-term production scheduling, and short-term shipment, among other things.
Increased Transparency
Blockchain offers increased supply chain transparency, reducing fraud in high-value items such as jewelry and pharma products. Blockchain technology enables businesses to comprehend better how goods and ingredients are routed through subcontractors, thereby reducing losses from fake and grey or black-market trading and boosting end-user confidence by reducing or removing the impact of counterfeit or expired products.
Additionally, corporations can manage outsourced contract production. All stakeholders in a supply chain have information with the same access, potentially eliminating communication or data transfer problems. Spend less time confirming data and more time delivering services and goods — either improving or lowering costs.
Transparent Transactions
There is no intermediary in the blockchain (e.g., a bank). As the ledger is updated automatically, this leads to speedier and more transparent settlements. Payment conditions, including the visibility of a transaction, can be pre-programmed automatically to be visible only to authorized parties.
Fees for Pre-Approved Transactions
When using Swift to make cross-border payments, the commission is withdrawn only after the transaction is complete — or, more precisely, after it has passed through several intermediary institutions. In the case of blockchain, you are aware of the fees in advance.
All transactions are immediately visible to authorized participants, ensuring that no information added to the blockchain can be tampered with, deleted, or concealed.
Due to blockchain’s distributed design, it lacks a single point of failure. Additionally, all transactions on the blockchain are immutable and irreversible, significantly reducing the possibility of fraud.
Blockchain supply-chain use cases are still rising, and several successful pilots indicate that managers can benefit significantly from blockchain, from cost savings and enhanced efficiency to developing new operational models.
Walmart and Blockchain
Walmart is a pioneer in this field, collaborating with IBM since 2016 on a blockchain-based traceability solution for the company’s food supply chain. Using the tested technology, the merchant tracked incoming food supply from “farm to store” in near real-time. Besides enhancing visibility, the company is investigating how blockchain technology might be applied to monitoring and managing the spread of foodborne illnesses and reducing costly recalls. In 2019, the food giant aimed to implement a mandatory blockchain-based tracking system for all lettuce growers.
Conclusion
Other businesses are investigating how blockchain technology may be used to validate the origin and path of goods sold and offer information about their legitimacy. For example, OriginTrail has tested the IoT and blockchain combination to combat wine fraud in collaboration with TagItSmart. Each hour, China sells over 30,000 counterfeit wine bottles. Several of them contain dangerous compounds linked to significant health concerns in users. The business’ blockchain-based platform enables them to track each wine bottle from vineyard to retailer. Its anti-counterfeit technology, which combines photochromic ink and unique QR codes, allows the provenance and authenticity of each bottle to be verified.
As early pilots demonstrate, the marriage of blockchain and supply chain management can be pretty potent. So much so that, over the next six years, 20% of the world’s top 10 grocers will use blockchain for food safety and traceability, increasing their visibility in terms of production, quality, and freshness.
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