Blockchain is a technology with unique combination of features such as decentralized structure, distributed notes and storage mechanism, consensus algorithm, smart contracting, and asymmetric encryption to ensure network security, transparency and visibility. Blockchain has immense potential to transform supply chain (SC) functions, from SC provenance, business process reengineering to security enhancement. More and more studies exploring the use of blockchain in SCs have appeared in recent years. In this paper, we consider a total of 178 articles and examine all the relevant research done in the field associated with the use of blockchain integration in SC operations. We highlight the corresponding opportunities, possible societal impacts, current state-of-the-art technologies along with major trends and challenges. We examine several industrial sectors such as shipping, manufacturing, automotive, aviation, finance, technology, energy, healthcare, agriculture and food, e-commerce, and education among others that can be successfully revamped with blockchain based technologies through enhanced visibility and business process management. A future research agenda is established which lays the solid foundation for further studies on this important emerging research area.

Blockchain technology in supply chain operations: Applications, challenges and research opportunities

Applying blockchain technology to improve agri-food traceability: a review of development methods, benefits and challenges

This study aims to explore the current status, potential applications, and future directions of blockchain technology in supply chain management. A literature survey, along with an analytical review, of blockchain-based supply chain research was conducted to better understand the trajectory of related research and shed light on the benefits, issues, and challenges in the blockchain-supply-chain paradigm. A selected corpus comprising 106 review articles was analyzed to provide an overview of the use of blockchain and smart contracts in supply chain management. The diverse industrial applications of these technologies in various sectors have increasingly received attention by researchers, engineers, and practitioners. Four major issues: traceability and transparency, stakeholder involvement and collaboration, supply chain integration and digitalization, and common frameworks on blockchain-based platforms, are critical for future orientation. Traditional supply chain activities involve several intermediaries, trust, and performance issues. The potential of blockchain can be leveraged to disrupt supply chain operations for better performance, distributed governance, and process automation. This study contributes to the comprehension of blockchain applications in supply chain management and provides a blueprint for these applications from the perspective of literature analysis. Future efforts regarding technical adoption/diffusion, block-supply chain integration, and their social impacts were highlighted to enrich the research scope.

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When Blockchain Meets Supply Chain: A Systematic Literature Review on Current Development and Potential Applications

This study proposes a technology- organization- environment (TOE) theoretical framework of critical factors that influence the successful adoption of blockchain technologies in the freight logistics industry and prioritize them using the analytic network process (ANP). The research findings indicate that ‘availability of specific blockchain tools’, ‘infrastructural facility’, and ‘government policy and support’ are the three topmost ranked significant factors that influence the adoption of blockchains in the freight logistics industry. These findings will aid government agencies, freight logistics firms and blockchain service providers in strategizing for the advancement and successful adoption of blockchain and improvement of overall organizational competitiveness.

Evaluating the factors that influence blockchain adoption in the freight logistics industry

Blockchain is a new generation of secure information technology that is fueling business and industrial innovation. Many studies on key enabling technologies for resource organization and system operation of blockchain-secured smart manufacturing in Industry 4.0 had been conducted. However, the progression and promotion of these blockchain applications have been fundamentally impeded by various issues in scalability, flexibility, and cybersecurity. This survey discusses how blockchain systems can overcome potential cybersecurity barriers to achieving intelligence in Industry 4.0. In this regard, eight cybersecurity issues (CIs) are identified in manufacturing systems. Ten metrics for implementing blockchain applications in the manufacturing system are devised while surveying research in blockchain-secured smart manufacturing. This study reveals how these CIs have been studied in the literature. Based on insights obtained from this analysis, future research directions for blockchain-secured smart manufacturing are presented, which potentially guides research on urgent cybersecurity concerns for achieving intelligence in Industry 4.0.

Blockchain-Secured Smart Manufacturing in Industry 4.0: A Survey

Supply chain re-engineering using blockchain technology: A case of smart contract based tracking process

Background: In the home care industry, the assignment and tracking of care services are controlled by care centers that are centralized in nature and prone to inefficient information transmission. A lack of trust among the involved parties, information opaqueness, and large manual manipulation result in lower process efficiency.
Objective: This study aimed to explore and demonstrate the application of blockchain and smart contract technologies to innovate/renovate home care services for harvesting the desired blockchain benefits of process transparency, traceability, and interoperability.
Methods: An object-oriented analysis/design combined with a unified modeling language tool was used to construct the architecture of the proposed home care service system. System feasibility was evaluated via an implementation test, and a questionnaire survey was performed to collect opinions from home care service respondents knowledgeable about blockchain and smart contracts.
Results: According to the comparative analysis results, the proposed design outperformed the existing system in terms of traceability, system efficiency, and process automation. Moreover, for the questionnaire survey, the quantitative analysis results showed that the proposed blockchain-based system had significantly (P<.001) higher mean scores (when compared with the existing system) in terms of important factors, including timeliness, workflow efficiency, automatic notifications, insurance functionality, and auditable traceability. In summary, blockchain-based home care service participants will be able to enjoy improved efficiency, better transparency, and higher levels of process automation.
Conclusions: Blockchain and smart contracts can provide valuable benefits to the home care service industry via distributed data management and process automation. The proposed system enhances user experiences by mitigating human intervention and improving service interoperability, transparency/traceability, and real-time response to home care service events. Efforts in exploring and integrating blockchain-based home care services with emerging technologies, such as the internet of things and artificial intelligence, are expected to provide further benefits and therefore are subject to future research.

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Ming-Fang Lu

Papers

Supply chain re-engineering using blockchain technology: A case of smart contract based tracking process

Development and Evaluation of a Smart Contract–Enabled Blockchain System for Home Care Service Innovation: Mixed Methods Study