
How to use blockchain for supply chain management - alexeysemeney
https://www.devteam.space/blog/blockchain-for-supply-chain-management/
======
a_t48
> The exciting thing about blockchain technology is that it acts as a
> decentralized ledger that uses encryption to make it secure.

Is "hashing" encryption? You can't really do "validation" like the diagram
says, either.

alexey: I know you wanna shill your website a bit, but you could have chosen a
better article to do so with.

------
vaillancourtmax
Not the best article to describe the benefits of blockchain for supply chain
management, but the point does get across.

Now, I'm aware that many people dismiss blockchain technology as a usable
medium to store information (instead of your typical SQL database), but one
clear advantage is that it's decentralized, which prevents a central authority
from tampering the data. For supply chain management, that's not a necessary
property, but when you consider product certifications (e.g. biological
produce, sustainable whatever, etc.) and authenticity, then decentralization
(and immutability) clearly become benefits. While I don't think it's okay to
use a blockchain because it's the cool thing to do nowadays, it certainly got
me thinking.

In December 2017, there was an E. coli outbreak in Canadian romaine lettuce,
killing some people in the eastern provinces. Health agencies tried to
identify the cause of the contamination, but they abandoned the investigation
after a few weeks [1].

I stumbled upon Provenance.org a few weeks ago, and as part of a student
project, some colleagues and I decided to develop a Provenance.org clone,
mostly as an excuse to learn Ethereum smart contract development and the
Solidity programming language (DApps and all that jazz). One challenge we're
currently running into is about the granularity of the the product tracking:
should a single box of Ritz crackers have its own identifier? Should the
entire pallet have a single identifier? How about raw materials that combine
to form an entirely new product? Or a pig that's split up into multiple parts
for markets to sell?

We're looking to open source the project at the end of the term (around May),
so if you're interested, reach out to me.

As previously stated, blockchain technology might not be the solution to
everything right now, but it's definitely interesting and fun to experiment
with.

[1] [https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/public-
healt...](https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/public-health-
notices/2017/public-health-notice-outbreak-e-coli-infections-linked-romaine-
lettuce.html)

~~~
noah-kun
Wouldn't the investigation into E. coli have been more fruitful if information
were more centralized? Isn't it already decentralized, wasn't that the
problem?

~~~
vaillancourtmax
Interesting argument. The problem about this particular investigation (which I
can only assume here) is that the available data did not offer relevant
information about the tracking of the lettuce.

If the required information _did_ exist but wasn't accessible, then you are
right in saying that the non-centralization of the data is a problem. I guess
the problem then lies in the fact that information is siloed in different
businesses. A solution to this could be the concept of federation, where all
such businesses use an agreed-upon protocol/platform, but all can use the
client of their choice.

~~~
noah-kun
Thanks for the open-minded reply.

Can we push our imaginations further though? We are still thinking about the
resources being distributed by businesses, for example. What about communes,
central planning or automation, minus private enterprise altogether?

------
nosuchthing
This is a really disingenuous submarine piece to sell consulting hours.

Blockchains are significantly more inefficient than traditional databases and
open up unnecessary security holes if its using PoW or PoS.

Distributed databases with amend only and some sort of log (add a merkle tree
and call it a blockchain™) would be more cost effective and efficient than any
actual blockchain system.

------
biggc
Is this satire?

------
seibelj
What did I just read? This is really poor quality

------
mantas
Looks like blockchain is the new nosql. But is it webscale?!?

