Decentralized Supply Chain Management secured with Blockchain

Project Title

Decentralized Supply Chain Management secured with Blockchain

Project Area of Specialization BlockchainProject Summary

Inside a supply chain, each node of the network faces a trust issue, that is, an uncertainty for if the product being delivered or recieved is of the utmost quality, i.e. the attributes of a product must not be altered through an existing opaque supply chain. Furthermore, the trust issue creates a higher certainty along with a time consuming pipeline that results in delayed delivery of the product.

Blockchain guarantees; lower uncertainty through the transparency of its distributed ledger, accurate end-to-end tracking of the product through out the supply chain and minimizing the risks of trust. Blockchain can inject supply chain transparency to help reduce fraud for high valued goods such as diamonds and pharmaceutical drugs. Blockchain could help companies understand how ingredients and finished goods are passed through each subcontractor and reduce profit losses from counterfeit and gray market trading, as well as increase confidence in end-market users by reducing or eliminating the impact of altered products.

Organizations' digitized assets will be added onto a decentralized immutable records of all transactions, making it possible to track assets from production to delivery or to be used by end user. This increased supply chain transparency provides more visibility to both businesses and the consumers. Furthermore, businesses can maintain more control over outsourced contract manufacturing. Blockchain provides all parties within a respective supply chain with access to the same information, potentially reducing communication or transfer data errors. Less time can be spent validating data and more on delivering goods and services - either improving quality, reducing cost, or both.

Finally, blockchain can streamline administrative processes and reduce costs by enabling an effective audit of supply chain data. Processes involving manual checks for compliance or credit purposes that may currently take weeks can be accelerated through a distributed ledger of all relevant information.

Project Objectives

The decentralized solution for Supply Chain Management based on blockchain aims to achieve following objectives:

• To create a trust less system of supply chain that lowers uncertainty using a distributed ledger whose all blocks are visible to each node of the network
• To create a decentralized network that maintains control, supervision and communication within a supply chain
• To increase traceability of material supply chain ultimately helping to lower losses from the counterfeit and gray market
• The proposed solution aims to improve visibility and compliance over outsourced contract manufacturing, and potentially enhance an organization's position as a leader in responsible manufacturing.

Project Implementation Method

Parallel Systems Implementation Method is the optimum choice to deploy a new revolutionary system side by side with the existing supply chain. An implemented scenario of the proposed solution is a as follows;

Mr. Ahmed is a supplier who has connections with multiple manufacturers of Mobile Phones. Through his existing network, Mr. Ahmed is capable of supplying various kinds of mobile phones to a group of local vendors in Karachi's main mobile markets using his existing supply chain. He holds a trustworthy position in the industry and his firm is capable of bringing revolution with the innovative use of technological solutions. 

He agrees to have implemented the proposed solution along his existing supply chain. Now he is capable of keeping track of his digitized assets operating through the supply chain. Using this solution Mr. Ahmed and his vendors have the ability to see the transparent transaction of the mobile phones from the inital stage of production. Mr. Ahmed also has certainty over every single product being delivered through his supply chain, tracking it at each level of the chain. Mr. Ahmed and his vendors now also have a clear transparency over the identity of each individual supplier or a firm that is a part of this supply chain.
Using the smart contract feature of the solution, Mr. Ahmed's vendors can verify the status of each asset via its digital signature that moves with the product along a decentralized network. With a certified token of transaction, any vendor has access over the network's authenticity and the authenticity of the product being delivered.

Mr. Ahmed now can easily decide over where he would require outsourcing the processes since the network is now trustless, including backtracking a product with the help of the distributed ledger to its true manufacturer. He can also provide validation over if the product has not been tampered with i.e. if the product is still genuine to its core.

Benefits of the Project

Potential Benefits:

• Increase traceability of material supply chain ensuring corporate standards
• Lower losses from counterfeit/ gray market trading
• Improve visibility and compliance over outsourced contract manufacturing
• Reduce paperwork and administrative cost
• Reduce delays in terms of approval and authentication

Additional Benefits:

• Strengthen corporate reputation through providing transparency of materials used in products
• Improve creditability and public trust of data shared
• Reduce potential public relations risk from supply chain malpractice
• Engage stakeholders in a progressively functional supply chain increasing partricipation

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

We will be using Ethereum as the Central Blockchain technology where frameworks like Truffle and Gnache which allow us to work with Ethereum. These framework will grant us with a local environment for the development of a final deliverable which is a software system. Smart contracts which are the core of an Ethereum Blockchain will be added by using programming tools such as Web3.js and Solidity.

A Single-Page-Application is a final deliverable which is to be connected to a database used for storing the assets and related data. Through an IPDB, a Blockchcain Database, data is frequently put over the functional blockchain as it gets stored in a pro-active Database and allowing recurrent queries.

Final Deliverable of the Project Software SystemCore Industry ITOther Industries Agriculture , Food , Manufacturing , Transportation Core Technology BlockchainOther Technologies Cloud InfrastructureSustainable Development Goals Industry, Innovation and InfrastructureRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	5000
Overheads incl. Documentation, Printing, Stationery	Miscellaneous	1	5000	5000