A Distributed Ledger for Supply Chain Physical Distribution Visibility
Open accessAbstract
Supply chains (SC) span many geographies, modes and industries and involve several phases where data flows in both directions from suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, to customers. This data flow is necessary to support critical business decisions that may impact product cost and market share. Current SC information systems are unable to provide validated, pseudo real-time shipment tracking during the distribution phase. This information is available from a single source, often the carrier, and is shared with other stakeholders on an as-needed basis. This paper introduces an independent, crowd-validated, online shipment tracking framework that complements current enterprise-based SC management solutions. The proposed framework consists of a set of private distributed ledgers and a single blockchain public ledger. Each private ledger allows the private sharing of custody events among the trading partners in a given shipment. Privacy is necessary, for example, when trading high-end products or chemical and pharmaceutical products. The second type of ledger is a blockchain public ledger. It consists of the hash code of each private event in addition to monitoring events. The latter provide an independently validated immutable record of the pseudo real-time geolocation status of the shipment from a large number of sources using commuters-sourcing.
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Three other contributions in the first cluster concern traceability in more general supply chain terms.
“Three other contributions concern the concept of traceability, but in more general terms refer to the supply chain [76,79,80].”
From A Review of Blockchain-Based Systems in Transportation (2019) · cites this paper as [76]
Other works in macro-cluster C1 propose a proof of concept based on Ethereum [79], Matlab [81], and an experimental blockchain based on three nodes [76].
“Other works in macro-cluster C 1 propose a proof of concept based on Ethereum [79], Matlab [81], and an experimental blockchain based on three nodes [76].”
From A Review of Blockchain-Based Systems in Transportation (2019) · cites this paper as [76]
Some documents in macro-clusters C1 and C2 present proofs of their concepts.
“Some of them propose new platforms just at a concept level [45,51,52,75,77,83,84,88,89,91], some of them present proofs of their concepts [76,79,81], and only three of them present a real implementation based on real blockchains: [78,80,82].”
From A Review of Blockchain-Based Systems in Transportation (2019) · cites this paper as [76]
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References 30 · Cited by 232
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Harrison, A.; van Hoek, R.I. Logistics Management and Strategy; Pearson Education: London, UK, 2008.
- Pike, R. The Go Programming Language; Addison-Wesley: Boston, MA, USA, 2015.
- Authors
- Wu, H., Li, Z., King, B., Ben Miled, Z., Wassick, J., & Tazelaar, J.
- Affiliations
- Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (US)
- Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Indiana University-Purdue University, 723 W. Michigan St, SL 160, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA
- Dow Chemical (United States) (US)
- Venue
- Information
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2017-11-02
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 137
- ISSN
- 2078-2489 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2765837921
- Cited by
- 232
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 40 · 2021: 37 · 2020: 50 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 17
- FWCI
- 53.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Information (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- IUScholarWorks (Indiana University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Purdue University Indianapolis (Indiana University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Publisher
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Food Supply Chain Traceability
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Management Information Systems › Supply Chain and Inventory Management
- Keywords
- distributed ledger technology, blockchain, supply chain visibility, product tracking, distribution logistics, public ledger, privacy, location tracking, supply chain information systems
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