Supply chain management includes the integrated planning as well as the execution of different processes. This involves material flow, information flow as well as financial capital flow. The management of the flow of goods, services, and information involving the storage and movement of raw materials, building products as well as full-fledged finished goods from one point to another is called as supply chain management. A supply chain within the SCM is a network of individual entities, organizations, businesses,
resources as well as technologies that combine together in the manufacturing of a product or service.
Why a Blockchain powered Supply Chain Management Solution?
Supply Chain is one sector that is expecting big disruption with Blockchain. Though traditional SCM systems work well for logging in data at each stage of the supply chain, it fails miserably in accountability, provenance, security and traceability. Also these legacy Supply Chain Management systems are not sophisticated enough to validate changes and updating made to the records.
This makes it un-reliable for use in sensitive business sectors that require tamper proof data maintenance. On the other hand, the inherent “distributed ledger” nature of the Blockchain makes all this seamlessly possible. All versions of changes to each data are maintained in a tamper proof manner that enables traceability and accountability in every stage of the process – in a way like never before.
How can this Turn-key script be used in a Food Supply Chain Management Use Case?
Any type of food in the world ( Rice, Fish, Vegetables, Bread, Wine, Juice etc. ) undergoes a ‘many stage’ process before it reaches the plate of a consumer in a restaurant -or- a Can in the retail store -or- a meal box served in an airplane etc. Food being food has a short shelf life and it needs a lot many quality steps to be taken care of, in each step of the process. Even a slightest mistake in any stage can result in the food item getting spoilt and create a disaster! (Just imagine if the food supplied to passengers in an International Aircraft is spoilt. It can result in passengers getting sick and may require to even doing an emergency landing to hospitalise people…. That results in huge loss for the aviation company and the reputation of the aviation brand going bad overnight).
When blockchain technology is employed in the entire supply chain process of any food, it enforces strict automatic audit in each stage. And anything going wrong in a particular stage of the process can be traced instantly and corrected. And, In the event of something going wrong, the ledgers can be queried to find exactly in which stage the mistake occurred, on what date and time, the person responsible, the batch of food that is affected etc.
Let’s take an example of a delicious Seafood dish being served in a restaurant. From the Ocean to your plate, the fish has undergone numerous stages of processing before reaching your plate. In each of the stages, the quality control can be enforced and all entries fed to the blockchain ledger. Let’s do a simple 5 step process and understand this example:
Step 1: Fish is weighed and downloaded from the ship.
Bluetooth Sensors in the weigh machine sends the exact weight of the fish to the Blockchain (along with the Date, Time, Name of the Fish, Photo of the location, Vessel name, Manager Name, Temperature etc.)
Step 2: The Fish is shipped to warehouses via. Transportation trucks.
The name of the truck, Driver, Start location, Destination is fed in the blockchain ledger. The IOT sensors in the truck feeds the temperature maintained in the truck constantly and the location coordinates etc.
Step 3: The Fish is moved from the warehouse to the retail stores.
The Date, Time of shipment, Warehouse name, Temperature maintained in the warehouse is constantly fed to the Blockchain ledger. The type of containers used to store the seafood is fed to the ledgers. Also the quantity of seafood uploaded to each vehicle is entered.
Step 4: The seafood reaches the restaurants from the retail stores (Note: For demo purpose, we are just skipping through a lot many process to finish this example in 5 simple step)
The date of shipment, the quantity, Name of Fish, Price is entered into the Blockchain automatically from the POS in the retail store. The restaurant to which the fish is shipped to, weight of each unit, Name of the fish etc. is entered in the system.
Step 5: The Chef cooks the fish before it getting served to you on the plate in the restaurant.
The name of the Chef, The restaurant, Address, The name of the delicacy he is cooking, the Recipe, the ingredients used in the delicacy, Date/ Time, Price etc. is fed to the Blockchain ledger ( along with your review of the dish from you ).
Just imagine, this data can be beautifully displayed to you on a mobile app just after you have ordered the food. So you know from the ocean to your pate…all the quality control and process the seafood has gone through to preserve your food.
Restaurants can use such un-altered data to check the quality of the seafood they are ordering.
Owners of the fishing firm get first hand, real time information of every stage their catch has gone through. They can monitor if everything is happening as per the established process, if there is any leakage.
Since the blockchain ledger is un-tamperable (i.e. each change to a block is a new record)…. Anyone with access can monitor all the changes that have been done to each data and checkout who made that change.
In case something goes wrong (like a can of fish getting spoilt), the owners can easily find out where and when the fault occurred… and identify the entire batch of the seafood for recall.
How can I make money using this Blockchain powered SCM script?
The owner of the Fishing Firm: Employ this solution to establish a perfect supply chain management platform to your business. Have the peace of mind that everything is always recorded and nothing can be changed. In each stage of the process, your managers can make sure the previous stage process has been followed with excellence. If anything goes wrong (Ex: wrong temperature in the truck), you can easily find at which stage what went wrong.
A Restaurant owner: You can check the ledger to get the best fish for your customers. You can also give a mobile app for your customers to check the process the food they have ordered has gone through. Your customers will just love it!
An Entrepreneur: Now you know the benefits of such an incredible solution. Sell it to the Fishing Firm Owner and the restaurants.
A Developer: Blockchain is the bleeding edge technology the entire world is interested in. Use this source code and documentation to setup a full Blockchain project and also master it.
