Blockchain Papers

Alexander Goudz

The following article sums up the current problems of the logistics and explains how the Blockchain technology can help to solve some of them. A utility value analysis is used to quantify the scenarios the Blockchain is most likely to be used in. This offers a result that, in comparison to current research, does not only show the opportunities but also how likely they are to be used in these sections. In the next step these scenarios are compared with each other. These results lead to a outlook to potential applications of the Blockchain technology in the logistics.

Mian Wasim Layaq, Alexander Goudz, Bernd Noche, Muhammad Atif

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the research development in supply chain risk management (SCRM) and to connect the new emerging digital technology Blockchain that could help to mitigate risks in any supply chain. Emerging literature, case studies, citations are used to fulfil this the task. The study will explore Blockchain and supply chain risks in details and will compare, how Blockchain based supply chain can mitigate these risks. There are many risks associated to supply chains but we will limit our study to only supply risk and study different areas of Blockchain application in supply chain with supply risk. Blockchain technologies have a potential to upgrade current supply chains. This will not only increase its performance in terms of speedy flow of raw material, finished goods, information and money flow but also help to mitigate current risk in supply chain by increasing visibility and transparency of supply chain. Smart contracts, IoT and Blockchain can serve together to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness in SCM. This research contributes to explore further research fields of Blockchain technology in different areas of supply chain risk management.

Murat Yılmaz, Faris Serdar Taşel, Eray Tüzün, Ulaş Güleç · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Julian Kolb, Luc Becker, Marcus Fischer, Axel Winkelmann

Disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, or the blockchain, have the potential to transform entire industries as previous publications have outlined. They especially offer new opportunities to improve existing processes in the dimensions of performance, cost, and quality. Despite a continuously growing number of contributions, research and practice lack an adequate understanding about how blockchain can be used to achieve these benefits. Against this backdrop, this paper presents the current state of blockchain research in the field of enterprise procurement and outlines several avenues for future research. Therefore, we define relevant processes and functions to build a research framework for structuring and categorizing the current body of literature. Our results suggest that previous work mostly focuses on blockchain application scenarios with a focus on communication and transaction, while widely neglecting numerous fields, such as data integrity and data access.

Sungwook Kim

In the last few years, blockchain technologies have come to the forefront of the research and industrial communities as they bring potential benefits for many industries. Even though the blockchain is a safe, reliable, and innovative mechanism, current blockchain solutions have fatal drawbacks of non-supervision and huge computational overhead. Therefore, they cannot be directly applied for real world operations. To resolve this problem, a novel model is presented in this study where the key idea is to split the transactions among multiple shards while processing them in parallel. To achieve the maximum system efficiency through the shard mechanism, we focus on the cooperative game theory. Based on the egalitarian bargaining solution, total transactions per each time period are divided for each shard. According to the proportional bargaining solution, assigned transactions in each individual shard are validated by blockchain nodes in a distributed manner. The main advantage of our two-phase bargaining game model is to provide an axiom-based strategic solution for the shard-based consensus problem while dynamically responding to the current blockchain network conditions. The numerical simulation results show that the effectiveness and efficiency of our game based approach by comparing the existing state-of-the-art blockchain control schemes. In the conclusion, we present our conclusions and provide important future research directions based on the combination of blockchain with other technologies.

Rosaire Brice Senou, Jules Dégila, Esther Chabi Adjobo, Abigaïl Priscilla M. Djossou

The blockchain technology impacts the supply chain and allows the creation of smart contract. This contract is executed digitally and securely without the presence of a middleman when all requirements are met. West and Central Africa countries produce 70% of world’s cocoa, while child labour is an issue as millions of children work in that sector. This paper contribution is mainly to enlighten smart contract adoption with respect to child abuse and to contribute to strategies for child labour reduction.

Vijaydeep Siddharth, Mansoor Hussain, Sanjay Arya

BACKGROUND: An efficient inventory control system would help optimize the use of resources and eventually help improve patient care. OBJECTIVES: The study aimed to find out the surgical consumables using always, better, and control (ABC) and vital, essential, and desirable (VED) technique as well as calculating the lead time of specific category A and vital surgical consumables. METHODS: This was a descriptive, record-based study conducted from January to March 2016 in the surgical stores of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. The study comprised all the surgical consumables which were procured during the financial year 2014-2015. Stores ledger containing details of the consumption of the items, supply orders, and procurement files of the items were studied for performing ABC analysis and calculating the lead time. A list of surgical consumables was distributed to the doctors, nursing staff, technical staff, and hospital stores personnel to categorize them into VED categories after explaining them the basis for the classification. RESULTS: ABC analysis revealed that 35 items (14%), 52 items (21%), and 171 items (69%) were categorized into A (70% annual consumption value [ACV]), B (20% ACV), and C (10% ACV) category, respectively. In the current study, vital items comprised the majority of the items, i.e., 73% of the total items and essential (E) category of items comprised 26% of all the items. The average internal, external, and total lead time was 17 days (range 3-30 days), 25 days (range 5-38) and 44 days (range 18-98 days), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Hospitals stores need to implement inventory management techniques to reduce the number of stock-outs and internal lead time.

Daniel Hellwig, Arnd Huchzermeier

No abstract is available for this record.

Lingxiao Song, Ning Nan, Shan Wang

Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology (DLT), is expected to be a disruptive technology by enabling a highly decentralized and trust-free business environment. Yet the business pursuit for profit maximization calls for a more centralized structure and thereby conflicts with the decentralized ideology of blockchain. In the context of blockchain-driven supply chain finance (SCF), while blockchain technology enables the decentralization of information, the decentralization of cash flow still relies on mid-tier suppliers’ token delivery in a centralized transaction structure. In other words, mid-tier suppliers can become a “bottleneck” in blockchain-driven SCF. In this paper, we consider the supply chain network as a complex system where firms are self-organized and adaptive to their competitive environment. Via this theoretical lens, we investigate how the application of blockchain technology (information flow), mid-tier suppliers’ token delivery (cash flow) and supply chain transaction structures (goods flow) interplay over time. We propose that in short term, blockchain technology increases mid-tier suppliers’ transaction efficiency and thus motivates mid-tier suppliers’ token delivery and promotes the decentralization of supply chain transaction structure; in long term, the decentralized supply chain transaction structure will in turn negatively affect mid-tier suppliers’ token delivery motivations and drive the centralization of a supply chain. We will test our theoretical propositions by a series of simulation experiments in an agent-based model.

Abdelatif Hafid, Abdelhakim Hafid, Mustapha Samih

In recent years, the scalability issue of blockchain protocols has received huge attention. Sharding is one of the most promising solutions to scale blockchain. The basic idea behind sharding is to divide the blockchain network into multiple committees where each committee processes a separate set of transactions. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model to analyze the security of sharding-based blockchain protocols. Moreover, we analyze well-known sharding protocols including RapidChain, OmniLedger, and Zilliga to validate our model. The key contribution of our paper is to bound the failure probability for one committee and so for each epoch using probability bounds for sums of upper-bounded hypergeometric and binomial distributions. In addition, this paper contribution answers the following fundamental question: “how to keep the failure probability, for a given sharding protocol, smaller than a predefined threshold?”. Three probability bounds are used: Chebyshev, Hoeffding, and Chvátal. To illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed model, we conduct a numerical and comparative analysis of the proposed bounds.

Niranjan Sapkota, Klaus Grobys

Cryptocurrencies employ different consensus protocols to verify transactions. While the Proof-of-Work consensus protocol is the most energy consuming protocol, Proof-of-Stake and Hybrid consensus protocols have been introduced which consume considerably less energy. We employ portfolio analysis to explore whether energy is a fundamental economic factor affecting cryptocurrency prices. Surprisingly, our results suggest that, on average, cryptocurrencies employing Proof-of-Work consensus protocols do not generate returns that are significantly different from those that incorporate Proof-of-Stake consensus protocols. Even more surprising is that our results show that cryptocurrencies that incorporate Hybrid consensus protocols generated significantly higher average return than the other groups. A possible explanation for that phenomenon may be that investors’ demand for cryptocurrencies that they perceive as offering more trust is larger than for those that carry potential risks of blockchain manipulation.

Federico Matteo Benčić, Pavle Skočir, Ivana Podnar Žarko

Supply chain management enhanced by the Internet of Things (IoT) solutions integrate special tags (e.g., RFID, NFC, and QR-codes) with products to create Smart Tags, in addition to storing supplemental information about a product, which is also used to track products during their lifecycle. However, a product consumer has to implicitly trust the Smart Tag creator and other stakeholders within the supply chain that they are providing authentic data within a product's tag. The DL-Tags solution steps into this environment to offer a decentralized, privacy-preserving, and verifiable management of Smart Tags during a product's lifecycle. The solution is based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) and uses the Ethereum blockchain to mediate interactions between the stakeholders during a product's exchange process. By reaching a consensus on the product's description and state logged on the blockchain, all involved stakeholders and product consumers can verify the product's authenticity without revealing their identity. The paper describes the DL-Tags solution and includes a cost analysis of all implemented transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. The proposed solution provides evidence of the product's origin and its journey across the supply chain while preventing tag duplication and manipulation. It is among the first documented practical solutions using DLT and IoT for supply chain management, which is designed to be distributed ledger agnostic.

Hussam Juma, Khaled Shaalan, Ibrahim Kamel

Blockchain has emerged as a promising technology to ensure trust between parties. By using this technology, we can establish a secure communication paradigm, where data integrity and immutability can be guaranteed. These inherited features underline blockchain as a suitable technology to optimise the adopted processing model in several domains, such as health, trade supply chain and food safety. In this paper, we present a detailed overview of the use of blockchain technology in (international) trade supply chains. Furthermore, the discussed proposals have been classified based on the target application scenarios. Our goal is to clarify the benefits of applying this technology to the trading domain and highlight the challenges that are associated with applying this technology to optimise the trading domain. Accordingly, we underline several issues that occur during the designing of the blockchain solution to optimise the (international) trade supply chain.

Ravi Chandra Koirala, Keshav Dahal, Santiago Matalonga

The concept of openness and decentralization is one which people have desired since years. Everyone wants transactional data to be transparent. When sensitive data are on the hand of third-parties, it may be susceptible to frauds and misuse. The advent of blockchain, a decentralized technology in cryptocurrency, has revealed an appropriate solution to address such issues. Blockchain maintains the integrity of a transaction. It not only secures from tempering and fraud but also ensures transactions are verifiable without involvement of an intermediate. Therefore, blockchain is applied to different decentralized domains that require trusted computing. Supply chain is one of these domains, that can benefit from trustworthy decentralized transactions initiated by multiple stakeholders. This paper presents a general model for a blockchain enabled supply chain. We have implemented this model using three smart contracts on an Ethereum platform. We have provided evidence of our verification and validation efforts. Our results convey the feasibility of the approach, which can streamline the administrative processes, and automatize the transactions making the system more efficient and transparent.

Gregor Blossey, Jannick Eisenhardt, Gerd J. Hahn

Given the hype around the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, blockchain technology (BCT) has also received considerable attention outside the financial sector. Multiple applications of BCT in supply chain management (SCM) are discussed in business practice and there is increasing interest in this topic within the academic community. In this paper, we intend to combine these two perspectives on BCT in SCM to summarize a current state of the art and to derive avenues for further research. For this purpose, a comprehensive framework of use case clusters of BCT in SCM is developed according to the distinctive features of BCT. The framework is used to analyze 53 applications of BCT in SCM which are derived from a systematic literature review and a secondary dataset of blockchain-driven innovations in SCM. We identify five emerging use case clusters of BCT in SCM which clearly extend the scope beyond frequently mentioned applications such as product tracking and tracing.

Ziyao Liu, Nguyen Cong Luong, Wenbo Wang, Dusit Niyato · 7 authors

Over the past decade, blockchain technology has attracted tremendous attention from both academia and industry. The popularity of blockchains was originated from the concept of crypto-currencies to serve as a decentralized and tamper-proof transaction data ledger. Nowadays, blockchains as the key framework in the decentralized public data-ledger have been applied to a wide range of scenarios far beyond crypto-currencies, such as the Internet of Things, healthcare, and insurance. This survey aims to fill the gap between a large number of studies on blockchain networks, where game theory emerges as an analytical tool, and the lack of a comprehensive survey on the game theoretical approaches applied in blockchain-related issues. In this survey, we review the game models proposed to address common issues in the blockchain network. The focus is placed on security issues, e.g., selfish mining, majority attack and denial of service attack, issues regarding mining management, e.g., computational power allocation, reward allocation, and pool selection, as well as issues regarding blockchain economic and energy trading. Additionally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these selected game theoretical models and solutions. Finally, we highlight important challenges and future research directions of applying game theoretical approaches to incentive mechanism design and the combination of blockchain with other technologies.

Shangping Wang, Dongyi Li, Yaling Zhang, Juanjuan Chen

With the improvement of living standard, people begin to pay more attention to food safety and product quality. Therefore, for consumers, it is necessary to establish a reliable system that can trace the source of products. However, most existing traceability systems tend to lack transparency, data is primarily stored within the enterprise, and the cost of tampering with data is very low. Besides, the supply chain nodes are easy to evade responsibility when product safety or quality issues arise under the traditional centralized management model, and it is difficult to trace the root of issues. The development of blockchain technology provides us with new ideas for realizing the traceability of products in supply chain scenarios. Due to its characteristics of decentralization, transparency, and immutability, blockchain can be effectively used to alleviate the above problems. In this paper, we propose a product traceability system based on blockchain technology, in which all product transferring histories are perpetually recorded in a distributed ledger by using smart contracts and a chain is formed that can trace back to the source of the products. In particular, we design an event response mechanism to verify the identities of both parties of the transaction, so that the validity of the transaction can be guaranteed. And all events are permanently stored in the form of logs as a basis for handling disputes and tracking responsible entities. Furthermore, a system prototype is constructed based on the testing framework of Truffle. The contract code is deployed on a test network TestRpc that runs in local memory, and a decentralized web page interface is implemented based on the prototype. Finally, the system security analysis and experimental results show that our solution is feasible.

Petra Maria Asprion, Philipp Hübner, Pascal Moriggl

Interoperability and traceability of digital supply chains are becoming a major competitive factor. Businesses operating in supply chains need to share interoperable information and systematically track product and service deliveries. This research investigates a novel approach to model digital supply chains and operationalizes this through a "Distributed Ledger System" in combination with "Smart Contracts". Based on design science, relevance and rigor for a novel approach are derived. As resulting ‘artifacts’, exemplary supply chains using colored Petri-nets are modeled as a structured and automatable instance for the sketched ‘Token-flow Supply Chains’. For the operation of our visionary scenario, a baseline concept with an associated architecture is drafted. We argue that the outlined approach and related artifacts are predestined to achieve a new quality of performance and innovation including bridging the current challenges for digital supply chains.

Teijo Peltoniemi, Jarkko Ihalainen

Objective: This exploratory study examines how distributed ledger technologies could be used within the plasma derivatives supply chain. The plasma derivatives are used increasingly in the pharmaceutical market and the supply chain is global. However, there are significant risks relating to the governance of the supply. The risks include unclear origin of plasma and the propagation of contaminated or poor-quality blood to the pharmaceutical production process. From an ethical perspective, the risk is that vulnerable individuals are exploited in the donation process. Finally, the plasma supply chain currently depends on only a few exporters of plasma, which presents a supply chain risk. Design: The blockchain technology is piloted in other areas of pharmaceutical supply chains and in this study we examine those solutions and conceptualize how a similar solution can be applied to the plasma supply chain. We identify risks within the plasma supply chain and discuss how blockchain-based solutions can mitigate those risks. Results: Drawing on existing literature within the pharmaceutical blockchain arena, we introduce a solution to verify the origin of plasma. We also model how the blockchain technology can be used to tackle ethical and supply chain risks. Conclusions: Blockchain can have a role in mitigating plasma supply chain risks. The area is, however, novel and requires more research.

Gabriella M. Hastig, ManMohan S. Sodhi

We seek to guide operations management (OM) research on the implementation of supply chain traceability systems by identifying business requirements and the factors critical to successful implementation. We first motivate the need for implementing traceability systems in two very different industries—cobalt mining and pharmaceuticals—and present business requirements and critical success factors for implementation. Next, we describe how we carried out thematic analysis of practitioner and scholarly articles on implementing blockchain for supply chain traceability. Finally, we present our results pertaining to the needs of different stakeholders such as suppliers, consumers, and regulators. The business requirements for traceability systems are curbing illegal practices; improving sustainability performance; increasing operational efficiency; enhancing supply‐chain coordination; and sensing market trends. Critical success factors for implementation are companies’ capabilities; collaboration; technology maturity; supply chain practices; leadership; and governance of the traceability efforts. These findings provide a nascent measurement model for empirical work and a foundation for descriptive and normative research on blockchain applications for supply chain traceability.

Taehyun Ko, Jaeram Lee, Doojin Ryu

Blockchain technology has been recommended for the sustainability in the manufacturing industry, owing to its benefits in terms of real-time transparency and cost savings. To verify this, we first examine how firms can employ distributed ledger technology by adopting blockchain technology to achieve real-time transparency and cost savings. We also review the current blockchain technology applications in the financial industry and supply chains to explain this technology’s mechanisms for enabling real-time transparency and cost savings in the manufacturing industry. Finally, we theoretically compare the profits of manufacturing firms in two managerial delegation games under a duopoly situation. This theoretical model suggests that the real-time transparency and cost savings secured by blockchain technology improve the profitability and competitiveness of manufacturing firms, which, in turn, assure the sustainability in the manufacturing industry.

Moritz Petersen, Niels Hackius, Birgit von See

Abstract Driven by successful pilot projects in supply chain and logistics, Blockchain has become one of the industry’s latest technology hypes. In this paper, we cut through the hype and shed light on the expectations of industry professionals towards the benefits and challenges of Blockchain. Also, we categorize current Blockchain applications that are expected to provide tangible benefits for supply chain and logistics processes. To explore such potentials, we argue that companies should gain own first-hand experiences through small-scale experiments.

Weifan Jiang, Jian Liu

Overconfidence is a universal psychological behavior. Overconfidence on demand awareness will have a significant impact on operation decisions. The supplier estimated the demand with excessive precision which influences the inventory financing decision-making deeply. We built the demand function based on the supplier’s overconfidence. Then we established the retailer, supplier, and the Bank’s profit function, respectively. Through the analysis of the bilevel Stackelberg game, we obtained the order quantity of the retailer with the capital constraint, the wholesale price of overconfident supplier, and the loan-to-value ratio of Bank, and we analyzed the influence of overconfidence on the decision variables. We have several findings as follows. First, the overconfidence makes the decisions of the retailer, supplier, and Bank deviate from the rational decisions. Second, the space of the market profit will affect the decision variables in the joint decision-making. Third, the financing supply chain (including the Bank and supply chain) should have a positive attitude towards the overconfidence of the supplier. Forth, in the joint decision-making, the supplier need determines the buyback price according to the capital demand; and in the decentralized decision-making, the supplier should try to use high buyback price strategy.

Peter Verhoeven, Florian Sinn, Tino T. Herden

In the context of logistics, blockchain can help to increase end-to-end visibility along global supply chains. Thus, it can lead to improved tracking of goods and offer tamper-proof data to build trust among parties. Although a variety of blockchain use cases already exists, not all of them seem to rely on blockchain-specific features, but could rather be solved with traditional technologies. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to identify characteristic use cases described for blockchain in the field of LSCM and to analyze them regarding their mindful technology use based on five mindful technology adoption principles: engagement with the technology; Technological novelty seeking; awareness of local context; cognizance of alternative technologies; and anticipation of technology alteration. The authors identified five blockchain case clusters and chose one case for each category to be analyzed in detail. Most cases demonstrate high engagement with the technology, but there are significant differences when it comes to the other mindful use principles. This paper highlights the need to understand the problem and to apply the right technology in order to solve it. When solving a problem, care should be taken to address a technology’s unique features to ensure effectiveness and cost-efficiency.