In my previous blogs I talked about the consequences of lack of visibility and traceability for the supply chain and logistics industry, how visibility in the industry has evolved over the decades and what continues to be missing. And even though digitization has become a buzzword in the industry for good reasons, without digitalization — process mapping and workflow optimization — we will keep defaulting to manual execution when there’s disruption or a larger crisis. In blog 4, I wrote about the need for interoperability for a data-driven supply chain that can support digitization and digitalization goals.
Blog 5 asked the question: “Do you want to own and control your data in supply chain & logistics?” A typical supply chain may involve hundreds of business transactions of data and information every day. Trading partners are skeptical about sharing data digitally due to rising cybercrime and their negative experience with transport management systems (TMS) providers and visibility platforms.
So then what is the solution to manage shipments in transit and to orchestrate the supply chain such that all the problems I mentioned above can be resolved?
Supply Chain “Orchestra”
To get to the solution, it’s important to think of supply chain as an orchestra – the trading partners of the supply chain as a large group of musicians who come together to deliver products and yourself as the conductor of the orchestra.
The conductor of an orchestra is responsible for delivering a unified interpretation of the music to the audience while keeping the musicians on time to maintain pace.
Interoperability powered by private blockchain technology allows you to be the conductor of your connected supply chain orchestra. With interoperability you bring visibility and traceability to ensure that ALL trading partners can flawlessly collaborate with each other and possess a single source of truth about product’s journey through your supply chain to ultimately keep delivering on time.
To address the concerns about data ownership and security on the blockchain: a private blockchain ensures that data of the data owner is managed (exchanged/transferred, recorded, processed, stored) in a fully encrypted and immutable manner.
To the international think-tanks it is evident that an end-to-end interoperable network solution with no gaps in adoption, regardless of the technical prowess of the trading partners and even in case of crisis or disruption in the supply chain, is the future.
The World Economic Forum has done a series of 6 whitepapers on blockchain technology’s implications for supply chains.
‘As a product travels from its origin to its destination in a supply chain, there may be many organizations involved. Each holds its own version of “truth” about the product’s journey. The multiple ledgers (hence the multiple”truths”) often lead to error, fraud, delays and inefficiency. Blockchain, as distributed ledger technology, can reduce those complex bilateral communications and informational linkages and leakages by providing a single, shared, tamper-evident ledger that records the transactions as they occur.’
-World Economic Forum
To conclude this series: Supply chain disruptions are inevitable, but the key to building a truly resilient supply chain lies in mastering visibility, digitalization and digitization, data ownership and security, and exception management using an interoperable network solution powered by private blockchain technology.
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