Fundamentally, supply chain management refers to the management of the flow of goods, products, and services, including data and finances. It covers activities from the procurement of raw materials to their manufacturing and delivery as products to the final destination. The activities also span across areas like procurement, product lifecycle management, supply chain planning, logistics, and order management. The SCM can also stretch to the processes for global trading, like the management of global suppliers and multinational production activities.
Benefits of Supply Chain Management System
- Higher Efficiency Rate
- Reduce Cost Effects
- Raises Output
- Raises Your Business Profit Level
- Boosts Cooperation
- Lowers Delay in Processes
- Enhances Supply Chain Network
How does blockchain help in SCM?
With blockchain technology-powered distributed ledger, it is possible to optimize the efficiency of supply chain management for diverse industries. At Oodles, our blockchain experts suggest that blockchain solutions can address several challenges residing within complex supply chain processes and provide benefits like:
- Reduce errors
- Avoid product delays
- Eliminate fraudulent activities
- Improve management
- Increase consumer/supplier trust
Supply Chain Management Challenges that blockchain applications or solutions can address
Data visibility and consolidation
Challenges: Manual, paper-based record-keeping and reporting systems often lead to scattered, incomplete, and unauthentic manifests, bills of lading, certifications, etc.
Opportunities: With blockchain record-keeping solutions, all supply chain stakeholders can securely and simultaneously store and share this information.
Tracking, transparency, and trust
Challenges: It is difficult to track the source of flawed parts and trace the provenance of previously shipped products.
Opportunities: Blockchain SCM can have a product’s entire geographic flow. It enables users to track products’ source and flawed components, investigate industry certifications, find storage-condition anomalies, etc.
Real-time issue resolution
Challenges: Natural disasters and unplanned demand and supply often lead to faulty or delayed delivery, which affects the entire production.
Opportunities: The delays involving weather or labor disputes are nearly unavoidable. However, blockchain-based SCM can provide solutions to resolve these issues in real-time. As per the occurred issue, it can instantly trigger actions like supplier substitutions or price adjustments.
Use Case
Alice wants to buy a rare and costly medicine for cancer treatment from a medical store. The description on that medicine states that “store in dry or cold storage below 20-degree celsius, failing which makes it unusable.”
The pharmacist stored the medicine according to the mentioned temperature as he had a proper setup at his store. However, what if the medicine has got misplaced during its journey from the production company to the medical store. Its effect will be lost if not preserved at the mentioned temperature.
In this case, due to a lack of information tracking, Alice has no option except trusting that nothing happened during the process. In such scenarios, blockchain can provide efficient tracking solutions.
Let’s assume that there is a microchip sensor (IoT chips) attached to the package of medicine. It records everything about it, from the manufacturing to its end users. At each step, stakeholders make transactions and update data regularly on a blockchain ledger.
Alice can use her phone to scan the barcode on the medicine package to get every detail. She can use it to verify that, at any point in time, it was in a mentioned environment.
Essentially, the integration of IoT with blockchain solutions solves supply chain management challenges like tracking and traceability. It provides the provision to verify the product, without trusting pharmacist or the process.
Now, take a look at the following image to understand how a blockchain-based SCM solution enables information tracking of products.
Additionally, blockchain technology provides the following advantages to SCM in a public or private network.
- No Central Authority
- Elimination of intermediaries
- Real-time settlement
- Drastic reduction in operational costs
- High level of transparency
Conclusion
Although blockchain technology is not the panacea for all the supply chain management challenges, it certainly provides some significant solutions that can maximize its efficiency. Traceability and tracking features can bring the required transparency and establish trust in the entire supply chain network. It can enable every participant to trace and track information of products from their provenance to end-users. In the next blog, you can check how a Hyperledger Fabric-based solution enables the seafood industry to enhance fisheries management with features like traceability and transparency.
Author Bio: Oodles is a Hedera Hashgraph development company that provides Hedera Hashgraph based application development services to easily overcome the challenges of stability, security, performance, governance, and regulatory compliance.
Supply chain management refers to the planning of the flow of goods, products, and services, including data and finances.
SCM can also span across the processes for global trading such as the management of global suppliers and multinational production activities.
However, legacy processes and opaque systems have created supply chain management challenges that blockchain technology can address.Benefits of Supply Chain Management SystemHigher efficiency rateReduce cost effectsRaises outputRaise business profit levelsBoosts cross-industry cooperationLowers delays in processesStrengthens the entire supply chain networkHow Does Blockchain Optimize SCM?With a blockchain technology-powered distributed ledger, diverse industries can optimize the overall efficiency of supply chain management.
At Oodles, our blockchain experts suggest that blockchain solutions can address several challenges residing within complex supply chain processes and provide benefits like:Reduced errorsNo product delaysPrevention of fraudulent activitiesImproved supply chain managementIncrease consumer/supplier trustAdditionally, blockchain technology provides the following advantages to SCM in a public or private network.No Central AuthorityElimination of intermediariesReal-time settlementDrastic reduction in operational costsHigh level of transparency Also Read:Strengthening the Procurement Process with BlockchainMaking Logistics Processes Efficient with Blockchain ApplicationsSupply Chain Management Challenges that Blockchain can AddressData consolidation and visibilityChallenges: Manual, paper-based record-keeping and reporting systems often lead to scattered, incomplete, and unauthentic manifests, bills of lading, certifications, etc.Opportunities: With blockchain record-keeping solutions, all supply chain stakeholders can store and share this information securely and simultaneously.Traceability, transparency, and trustChallenges: It is always challenging to track the source of flawed parts and trace the provenance of previously shipped products.Opportunities: Blockchain SCM can have a product’s entire geographic flow.
It enables users to track products’ source and flawed components, investigate industry certifications, find storage-condition anomalies, etc.Real-time issue resolutionChallenges: Natural disasters and unplanned demand and supply often lead to faulty or delayed delivery, which affects the entire production.Opportunities: The delays involving weather or labor disputes are nearly unavoidable.
However, blockchain-based SCM can provide solutions to resolve these issues in real-time.
Are you willing to create blockchain based mobile apps or web application?
Third parties that help in performing the transaction only get to know the exact amount of information they require.
Peers of the hyperledger network show the most noticeable changes.
Three different roles are committer, endorser, and consenters.
— Another one is Hyperledger Sawtooth that tracks the journey of the fishes in the fishing industry.
— Next one is Hyperledger Burrow that has the application of executing Ethereum smart contracts in a Hyperledger network.
