Almost all of the leading companies in the world run on computerized enterprise resource planning (ERP) and the supply chain management software.

The blockchain technology is completely transforming industries, embellishing the customer experience and building the trust across various other businesses.

Bitcoin along with other cryptocurrencies are showing by their popularity how useful they can be in industries like finance and banking; the technology doesn’t seem to stop here. In this article, we’ll be sharing with you some of the blockchain use cases in the supply chain management.

Let me put it this way, the supply industry, for now, is experiencing a few issues that need to be solved right away.  For example, a shipment of refrigerated goods moving from Africa and Europe can pass via some people and organizations, encountering more than 200 interactions between them.

The blockchain technology can help in eradicating these interactions by ensuring origin and provide traceability across the supply chain system. This can curb down the number of counterfeiters and thereby assuring safety. The technology allows the manufacturers, customers, and shippers collected data, analyze trends and carry out extensive monitoring.

The technology has now seized the attention of the public, just when the first cryptocurrency ‘bitcoin’ shook the financial service industry. It does not seem to stop here; the technology is now expanding to sectors like healthcare, energy, telecommunications, and supply chain.

Blockchain, for now, stands as the guard, in the wake of “trust economy”, in which supply chain is playing the central role. The supply chain’s effectiveness relies on the trust between the distinct stakeholders and the communication between blockchain and IoT technologies can aid in increasing the dependability and traceability of information together with the chain.  

The Blockchain Use Cases in Supply Chain:

Automobile Industry

The whole of the automobile industry is an industry full of opportunities and witnesses transformation on a regular basis; the potential here is staggering and overwhelming.

According to the prediction of Frost & Sullivan, by 2025, the rate of blockchain technology in areas like retailing and leasing, smart manufacturing and supply chain logistics will hit somewhere around 37.2 percent.

The multinational professional services firm, EY predicts that blockchain will spread across the whole of the automotive marketplace. EY hopes that ownership, financing, registration, insurance and service transactions can all be under with the implementation of blockchain technology.

Pharmaceuticals

Blockchain can improve the supply chain of pharmaceuticals in quite a few ways. We’ll show you how the technology can help in this sector. Medicines have to be kept at a particular temperature.

Most of the medicines which are being shipped from the manufacturer to different warehouses have to stay within a specific temperature range. Taking this into consideration, the blockchain technology can be tuned in, giving out alarming signals whenever the temperature gets either too high or drops low.

Blockchain in healthcare does more than just monitoring and verifying; it also helps in managing the source of the medication till the destination. The manufacturer or the supplier will find it easy to identify and rectify the inconvenience that is caused during the shipment process. The process becomes simpler because all of the operations and checkpoints are logged into blockchain.

Food Safety

Not following the safety issues concerning food can lead to several foodborne illnesses, also the unnecessary waste of food. Lack of tracking solution can sometimes take months to identify the cause of contamination or the point where the food gets contaminated.

And consumers are demanding complete transparency over the supply of food. According to IBM, blockchain technology will enable companies to track the contaminated product and ensure that it is safely removed from the restaurants or stores.  

CONCLUSION

The few of the examples that we’ve shown here go on to explain the potential of the blockchain technology. It also goes to show how these use cases of blockchain can transform the way we distribute goods.

Blockchain as technology can change the supply chain and dismantle the way goods are produced, purchased and consumed. The reason blockchain technology is said to impact the supply chain management massively is because it will be able to provide more security and transparency to track all kinds of transactions.

Each of the time a product changes hands from manufacturer to the consumer, the transaction can be recorded, thereby creating a permanent history of a product.