Sharfuddin Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Shujaat Mubarik, Simonov KusiâSarpong, Himanshu Gupta ¡ 6 authors
Abstract The advent of blockchain technologies is transmuting the way conventional supply chains are being managed. Due to the complexity of dealing with many actors involved in the supply chain networks, contemporary supply chains have limited visibility, transparency, and accountability. Likewise, supply chains are increasingly facing the challenge of integration and sustainability. In this vein, blockchain technologies can play a groundbreaking role in improving the traceability, accountability, and sustainability of complex supply chain networks. The present study examines the instrumentality of blockchain technologies in enabling supply chain mapping and supply chain integration. The study also tests the direct impact of blockchain technologies on supply chain sustainability. Data are collected from 132 Malaysian Electrical and Electronics firms using a closeâended questionnaire. The study employs Partial Least SquaresâStructural Equation Modelling (PLSâSEM) and Partial Least SquaresâMulti Group Analysis (PLSâMGA) for analyzing the hypothesized relationships. The results show that blockchain technologies do not have a direct impact on supply chain sustainability. Nevertheless, this finding reveals a robust indirect effect of BT, through SC integration and SC mapping, on the SC sustainability. The study's findings imply that the notion of the sustainable supply chain can be significantly attained by mapping upstream, midstream, and downstream supply chains. The wellâmapped supply chain can further improve supply chain sustainability. The findings of the study also suggest the adoption of blockchain technologies as a broadâbased strategy to attain multiâtier goals, for example, supply chain mapping, sustainability, and integration.
Abstract The critical role of blockchain technology in ensuring a proper level of traceability and visibility along supply chains is increasingly being explored in the literature. This critical examination must focus on the factors that either encourage or hinder (i.e. the drivers or barriers) the implementation of this technology in extended supply chains. On the assumption that the blockchain will need to be adopted at the supply chain level, the enabling factors and the contingent variables of different supply chains must be identified and analysed. The appropriate identification of supply chain partners is becoming a critical factor of success since the globalization of supply chains makes their management and control increasingly difficult. This is particularly true of the fashion industry. Five blockchain providers and seven focal companies working in the fashion industry were interviewed to compare their different viewpoints on this topic. The results highlight which drivers, barriers, and supply chain variables impact the implementation of the blockchain and specific research propositions are formulated.
K. Yan, Linmu Cui, Hang Zhang, S. Liu ¡ 5 authors
Blockchain technology has subverted traditional supply chain operational models and transformed information interactions along supply chains. This paper examines the impact of blockchain technology on supply chain information collaboration and operating costs. This paper develops a three-level supply chain model based on blockchain technology that incorporates retailer sensitivity to information. First, the manufacturerâs profit function is developed, and the optimal information-sharing quantity and supply chain pricing decisions are analysed. Then, cost models for both the traditional supply chain and the novel supply chain using blockchain technology are developed and the impact of blockchain technology on supply chain operating costs is determined. The results demonstrate that blockchain technology can effectively reduce supply chain operating costs. In addition, this study has an interesting finding that if blockchain adoption is valuable for the supply chain, the quantity of information-sensitive should be moderate. Too many or too few information-sensitive retailers can reduce the value of the blockchain's use. This is because blockchain is implementation will increase the privacy concerns of supply chain companies.
Matthias Lohr, Kenneth Skiba, Marco Konersmann, Jan Jßrjens ¡ 5 authors
Existing fair exchange protocols usually neglect consideration of cost when\nassessing their fairness. However, in an environment with non-negligible\ntransaction cost, e.g., public blockchains, high or unexpected transaction cost\nmight be an obstacle for wide-spread adoption of fair exchange protocols in\nbusiness applications. For example, as of 2021-12-17, the initialization of the\nFairSwap protocol on the Ethereum blockchain requires the selling party to pay\na fee of approx. 349.20 USD per exchange. We address this issue by defining\ncost fairness, which can be used to assess two-party exchange protocols\nincluding implied transaction cost. We show that in an environment with\nnon-negligible transaction cost where one party has to initialize the exchange\nprotocol and the other party can leave the exchange at any time cost fairness\ncannot be achieved.\n
Tangle is a distributed ledger technology that stores data as a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Unlike blockchain, Tangle does not require dedicated miners for its operation; this makes Tangle suitable for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Distributed ledgers have a built-in transaction rate control mechanism to prevent congestion and spamming; this is typically achieved by increasing or decreasing the proof of work (PoW) difficulty level based on the number of users. Unfortunately, this simplistic mechanism gives an unfair advantage to users with high computing power. This paper proposes a principal-agent problem (PAP) framework from microeconomics to control the transaction rate in Tangle. With users as agents and the transaction rate controller as the principal, we design a truth-telling mechanism to assign PoW difficulty levels to agents as a function of their computing power. The solution of the PAP is achieved by compensating a higher PoW difficulty level with a larger weight/reputation for the transaction. The mechanism has two benefits, (1) the security of Tangle is increased as agents are incentivized to perform difficult PoW, and (2) the rate of new transactions is moderated in Tangle. The solution of PAP is obtained by solving a mixed-integer optimization problem. We show that the optimal solution of the PAP increases with the computing power of agents. The structural results reduce the search space of the mixed-integer program and enable efficient computation of the optimal mechanism. Finally, via numerical examples, we illustrate the transaction rate control mechanism and study its impact on the dynamics of Tangle.
Tarun Kumar Agrawal, Jannis Angelis, Wajid Ali Khilji, Ravi Kalaiarasan ¡ 5 authors
Blockchain technologies can support traceability, transparency and trust among participants. This has primarily been explored in established supply chains and not in the growing use of business networks or ecosystems, which is a notable limitation since supply chains typically are organised with a dominant actor that ensures common information systems and standards that negate blockchain benefits. Hence, this study explores the design of a blockchain-based collaborative framework for resource sharing using smart contracts. These are particularly well-suited for supporting operations in broader networks or ecosystems beyond supply chains with established collaborations and hierarchies. Based on a systematic literature review, a demonstrator framework was developed for stakeholder interactions through a procurement and distribution unit backed with blockchain technology. The framework consists of (a) network architecture to demonstrate partner interactions; (b) rules for network working principles based on supply collaboration requirements; (c) UML diagram to define smart contract interaction sequence; and (d) algorithm for smart contract network verification and validation. Applicability of these smart contracts was verified by deployment on an Ethereum blockchain. The demonstrator framework ensures quality and data authenticity in supply networks, so it is useful for effective resource utilisation in networks where outsourcing and production surpluses are major issues.
Thomas K. Dasaklis, Theodore G. Voutsinas, Giannis Τ. Tsoulfas, Fran Casino
In recent years, traceability systems have been developed as practical tools for improving supply chain (SC) transparency and visibility, especially in health and safety-sensitive sectors like food and pharmaceuticals. Blockchain-related SC traceability research has received significant attention during the last several years, and arguably blockchain is currently the most promising technology for providing traceability-related services in SC networks. This paper provides a systematic literature review of the various technical implementation aspects of blockchain-enabled SC traceability systems. We apply different drivers for classifying the selected literature, such as (a) the various domains of the available blockchain-enabled SC traceability systems and relevant methodologies applied; (b) the implementation maturity of these traceability systems along with technical implementation details; and (c) the sustainability perspective (economic, environmental, social) prevalent to these implementations. We provide key takeaways regarding the open issues and challenges of current blockchain traceability implementations and fruitful future research areas. Despite the significant volume and plethora of blockchain-enabled SC traceability systems, academia has so far focused on unstructured experimentation of blockchain-associated SC traceability solutions, and there is a clear need for developing and testing real-life traceability solutions, especially taking into account feasibility and cost-related SC aspects.
Blockchain technology has been growing in importance and acceptability over the past few years. Yet, there is limited empirical research on the organizational and technology specific factors that play a critical role in driving its adoption in the supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework for blockchain adoption in the supply chain by identifying the enablers and empirically evaluating their interdependencies and impact on adoption. 20 enablers of blockchain adoption in the supply chain are identified using an extensive literature review and theoretical lenses from the Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory and the business technology adoption model developed by Iacovou, Benbassat and Dexter (1995). In the confirmatory phase, we employ the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method to extract logic from data collected from 37 French experts about the impact of the enablers and their interdependencies. Our paper extends the multi-theoretic empirical studies to blockchain technology and identifies the enablers of blockchain adoption from technological, organizational, supply chain and external environment perspectives. Regarding the importance of the categories of enablers, we find that the relative advantage of the technology and the external pressure are the most prominent categories of enablers that impact blockchain adoption in the supply chain. Our analysis also shows the important causal role on adoption of the potential of blockchain to reduce transaction cost, the consumer interest in traceability data and the establishment of a regulatory framework for blockchain usage.
Sana Elhidaoui, Khalid Benhida, Said El Fezazi, Srinivas Kota ¡ 5 authors
The main purpose of this paper is to study the critical success factors (CSFs) of the blockchain technology (BCT) adoption in green supply chain management (GSCM) which might be literally afirst attempt and also propose aconceptual framework of aGSCM model adopting the BCT, which will be promoting the combination of these two areas in the future. Acritical literature review of the BCT, GSCM, and BCT-based GSCM was conducted to identify the most relevant factors of BCT adoption, followed by the model formulation with the help of interpretive structural modelling (ISM) consisting of CSFs and relationships between those based on expertsâ views. The overall results emphasized that ârecording and tradingâ-related factors may contribute to the BCT adoption, while others like smart contract must be enhanced. This study supports previous conceptual work on BCT and GSCM and could serve as astarting point to assist in decision-making.
Port supply chains play a very important role in the process of economic globalization. Lack of trust of the mechanism is the main factor in restricting the development of port supply chains. Blockchains have great potential to solve the trust problem among all participants using port supply chains, which can reduce costs and improve efficiency. As the bridge between blockchains and port supply chains, smart contracts reconstruct the business process of blockchain-empowered port supply chains. In this article, we present an architecture of a consortium blockchain-empowered port supply chain system, and propose a system verification framework for the smart contracts of port supply chains with probabilistic behaviors. The smart contracts are modeled as DTMCs (Discrete-Time Markov Chains), which are automatically transformed through the BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) description of the smart contracts. The requirements are specified by PCTL (Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic). Moreover, we implement the customs clearance process of the Shanghai Yangshan Port based on blockchain Hyperledger Fabric, and reconstruct the clearance process with smart contracts. We use it to demonstrate the effectiveness of this framework, and identify the smart contracts that do not meet the expected needs of users.
Background: Blockchain is a digitally managed, distributed, and decentralized ledger used to record transactions in an immutable format. Its characteristics in providing trust, transparency, and traceability make it attractive for applications where transactions are involved. Originally intended to support financial transactions, the technology has gained attention even in non-financial sectors such as health care, manufacturing, retail, and government services. Methods: For centuries, the various functions of manufacturing industries have worked based on the relationship and trust that they have with their upstream and downstream stakeholders. In addition, as the conventional factories are growing into giant gigafactories, the participation of several intermediaries further complicates the supply chain and logistics operations. Hence, the article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the role of blockchain technology in addressing supply chain and logistics-related challenges by analyzing, organizing, and reviewing the literature. Results: The study shows that blockchain technology can transform the supply chain and logistics into secure, agile, trusted, and transparent functions. A conceptualized application scenario demonstrates the benefits of blockchain technology in providing provenance and traceability to critical products. Conclusions: In particular, a private or permissioned blockchain is suitable for multi-organizational businesses such as supply chain and logistics. In addition, IoT-blockchain integration, smart contracts, and asset tracking has immense benefits in the future.
Anand K. Bapatla, Saraju P. Mohanty, Elias Kougianos, Deepak Puthal ¡ 5 authors
Abstract Globalisation has facilitated different industries to eliminate geographical boundaries and equipped organisations to work collectively to produce goods. Pharmaceuticals is one such industry which has majorly benefited from globalisation to reduce costs and increase profitability at different aspects of research, development, manufacturing of drugs and finally distribution of drugs. Globalisation not only reduces costs and increases profits for the industry, it also makes essential medication available to all individuals even at remote areas of undeveloped, developing and developed countries. As the number of entities or participants grew in the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain (PSC), the complexity and abstractness of the drug delivery from manufacturer to consumer has increased, which raised new concerns like counterfeit medication, incorrect, incomplete or no information about the drug reaching the consumer thus undermining customer confidence and most importantly distribution delays which can cause serious impact on the life of the consumer as well as business growth. Considering all these challenges, there is a dire need for a robust PSC which can eliminate blind parties and provide a transparent chain. A transparent PSC will eliminate data fragmentation between different participating entities by creating a trail of secure, single source of truth for the entire life cycle of a medicine, thereby eliminating the introduction of counterfeits and ensuring the consumer safety. This article proposes a novel Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) based transparent supply chain for PSC and proofâofâconcept is implemented to analyse the scalability and efficiency of the proposed architecture. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is one of the technologies which can provide such transparent PSC and Smart Contracts (SC) are the most commonly used component in such systems to implement business logic and access control mechanisms. The proposed PharmaChain model investigates all the interactions between the main entities in PSC and also addresses smart contract issues such as reâentrance, randomness and lacking trustworthy data feed. Results are compared with other proposed solutions for PSC based on DLT.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been received extensive attentions. However, substantial CSR investment triggers some suppliersâ greenwashing behaviors which refer to hiding irresponsible operations and exaggerating CSR efforts, and raise concerns from consumers with CSR awareness. In this paper, we explore the impact of blockchain implementation on CSR efforts along a supply chain consisting of one supplier and one retailer under the supplier Stackelberg and retailer Stackelberg models. We consider a group of consumers with CSR awareness who have concerns about the supplier's greenwashing behavior. The adoption of blockchain helps the supply chain members foster consumersâ trust about CSR involvement, by linking CSR related information nodes to blockchain. We identify the conditions where blockchain implementation makes the supplier be more responsible. The supplier has stronger incentives to adopt blockchain when undertaking sufficiently high penalty after violation detection. Under the situation, the supplier makes more CSR efforts which is efficient in the presence of blockchain to eliminate consumersâ concerns about greenwashing. For the retailer, blockchain implementation is beneficial when the detection is efficient enough without blockchain and the penalty cost is not significantly high.
Yet we cannot guarantee that the information that is shared among supply chain entities is correct. Blockchain has been proposed to solve the lack of trust in financial transactions. This paper examines whether blockchain enables entities in the supply chain to trust the shared information regarding the physical flow. A conceptual framework is proposed to explain how and why supply chain entities can trust the shared information when using blockchain. This paper deepens our knowledge of the use of blockchain in the supply chain. It also provides valuable insights to those working in information and supply chain management related-fields.
Carol Riona Lobo, Hendro Wicaksono, Omid Fatahi Valilai
The advancement in technology, such as, Smart Logistics, IoT, RFID, sensors, and 5G, resulted in the evolution of Industry 4.0 that has started gaining a lot of popularity among different sectors like last mile delivery. This is important as the rising demand for such technology enabled platforms has been found to be necessary for fulfilling the opt for e-commerce services to support the retail outlets. The literature shows that to relax the pressure on the last mile sector, blockchain technology can be an effective solution both to protect the firm financial aspects and sustainability requirements. To ensure efficiency in the system and success in the implementation of blockchain technology into the last mile delivery sector, it is essential to study the various factors and capabilities of blockchain to handle the existing problems and requirements to analyze the efficiency of this integration. The focus areas of this paper are mainly to identify the impact of applying blockchain technology to support the last mile delivery of goods. The impacted areas focus mainly on the efficiency of the process and its leverage on the costs, both administrative and operational, and level of sustainability achieved. The proposed platform has enabled the enhancement of the integration of blockchain into the last mile delivery. The proposed smart contract system is designed to efficiently assign the orders from the demander to the respective fleet providers with the help of miners. This assignment is made possible by considering the various aspects that have been stored into the system, namely geographical location, the proximity to the destination of delivery along the route of delivery, size of the parcels, and capacity of the fleet.
The credibility of information is known as a major cause of a wide range of issues, such as: altered product information in food supply chains; fake transactions on E-commerce platforms; lengthy claim settlement time in agricultural insurance; and costly borrowings in agricultural financing. For a more specific example in food supply chains, end customers want to check the product information, but either doubt the authenticity of information, or simply do not have access to the information. The reason is that upstream suppliers and downstream retailers are often reluctant to share data, fearing privacy loss or business secret leakage. The consequence is that regulatory departments may face enormous challenges to identify accurate contamination sources, if there is scarce information or falsely recorded information at any stage of the food supply chain. In this paper, we focus on four common scenarios demanding information credibility in the agricultural supply chain: product traceability, E-commerce platforms, agricultural insurance, and agricultural financing. We review some high-profile smart credibility applications with emphasis on how blockchain related technologies can provide the information credibility by examining extant issues and relevant frameworks.
We review the recent developments in dynamic inventory models with financial flow considerations. The focus is on the literature that introduces cash flow dynamics into the classic inventory models that do not explicitly consider the interactions between physical (or material) and financial flows. These augmented models serve two important purposes. First, they help understand the impact of financial flows on inventory dynamics and decisions. Second, with the connection to the classic inventory models, one can leverage the extant results to derive the optimal control policy or to evaluate/optimize the performance of any given type of policy and reveal insights. We summarize models for both single-stage and multi-stage inventory systems, and discuss the implications and applications to decentralized systems within a broader topic of supply chain finance.
Feruz K. Elmay, Khaled Salah, Ibrar Yaqoob, Raja Jayaraman ¡ 6 authors
An unprecedented amount of goods and commodities are shipped and transported globally each day through different modes of transport. Due to its complexity, the maritime industry suffers from a lack of trust and secure ownership evidence, protracted documentation procedures, and excessive data aggregation. These shortcomings are reflected in cargo processing delays and elevated costs in the shipping process. Most of todayâs systems and technologies leveraged for managing shipping containers in unimodal and multimodal logistics fall short of providing transparency, traceability, reliability, audit, security, and trust features. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based solution that allows users to trace and track their container shipments in a manner that is decentralized, transparent, auditable, secure, and trustworthy. We employ the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to overcome the limited data storage problem. We develop smart contracts and present algorithms along with their full implementation, testing, and validation details in both unimodal and multimodal logistics. We present security and cost analyses to show that the proposed solution is secure and cost-efficient. Furthermore, we compare our proposed solution with the existing solutions to show its novelty. All developed smart contract codes are made publicly available on GitHub.
Blockchain research in the supply chain management field is growing. The complexities of blockchain as a technology and its potential implications for business and digital ecosystems have expanded the spectrum of research areas that need to be investigated to further develop this emerging field. The increasing number of applications of the technology in supply chain practice calls for theory-driven research to develop better understanding of blockchain and its implications for the supply chain. However, theory-based research on blockchain adoption, deployment and use is scarce, limiting theory development in the field. There is a lack of guidance on the range of theories that can be used to undertake theory-driven research that investigates different facets of blockchain adoption, deployment and use. We address this need in this research. We draw on the existing literature to develop a comprehensive list of factors and barriers for blockchain applications in the supply chain. We present a framework for theory-driven research capturing four distinct facets of supply chain research studies - intra-organizational, inter-organizational, technical, and external environment. Considering the multidisciplinary nature of blockchain research, we propose different theoretical perspectives that can be used alone or in combination to advance theory development in each area as the pace of blockchain adoption in the supply chain increases.
Lili Zhang, Wenhao Guo, Wenwen Yang, Di Su ¡ 5 authors
As a decentralized and distrusted distributed ledger technology, blockchain is gradually applied in the IOT. Cost overrun are inherent part of most smart âIOT+ blockchainâ projects. In order to guarantee a successful delivery of a smart âIOT+ blockchainâ project with the ideal budget, with respect to the minimum cost of the forward problem is still higher than the approved budget, this research proposes a re-verse optimization method of 0-1 mixed-integer, bi-level programming model for reverse-inferring duration and personnel re-assignment. Based on a numerical experiment to a âIOT+ blockchainâ construction project, the comparative results show that the reverse optimization method is superior to the forward method in terms of total cost reduction and can further shorten the duration. The result indicates that the reverse optimization methodology can be applied in scenarios which need to guarantee the objective value achieved through the proposed reverse modelling methodology by optimizing parameters and decision variables.
Arthur Egwuonwu, Arthur Egwuonwu, Chima Mordi, Ambrose Egwuonwu ¡ 6 authors
Abstract Despite the increasing proliferation of deploying the internet of things (IoT) in the global value chain (GVC), several challenges might lead to a lack of trust among value chain partners, for example, technical challenges (i.e., confidentiality, authenticity, and privacy); and security challenges (i.e., counterfeiting, physical tampering, and data theft). In this study, we argue that blockchain technology (BT), when combined with the IoT ecosystem, will strengthen GVC and enhance value creation and capture among value chain partners. Therefore, we examine the impact of BT combined with the IoT ecosystem and how it can be utilized to enhance value creation and capture among value chain partners. We collected data through an online survey, and 265 U.K. Agriâfood retailers completed the survey. Our data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Our finding reveals that BT enhances GVC by improving IoT scalability, security, and traceability combined with the IoT ecosystem. Moreover, the combination of BT and IoT strengthens GVC and creates more value for value chain partners, which serves as a competitive advantage. Finally, our research outlines the theoretical and practical contribution of combining BT and the IoT ecosystem.