Deploying Blockchain Technology in the Supply Chain

Research Objective:

Bitcoin technology is anticipated to add important business value to various industry areas, including the Supply Chain Management (SCM) sector, where it can provide higher visibility, immutability, and trust in inter-organisational businesses. With time, the supply chain has become a vital research domain that directly or indirectly impacts every item, from cost to accessibility and quality. Blockchain Technology (BCT) could be an SCM solution and allows the business to ensure transparency, traceability, and authenticity of the information. However, blockchain has faced many obstacles and difficulties in data privacy and security, cost and resource limitations, regulation and governance, and interaction and consensus protocols.  

The main objective of this work is to undertake proof-of-concept experiments to investigate the use of Blockchain technology in the supply chain. Specifically, the study can confirm that it is possible to apply blockchain technology to the supply chain to achieve traceability, transparency, data security and scalability.

Expected Outcome:  

This project will investigate the use of BCT to exploit data availability in SCM, with a focus on integrating data visibility and security. This research also investigates the ability of BCT as a solution in a distributed ledger method to provide a trust-enhanced environment where stakeholders may effectively share their knowledge. We will also implement a robust experimental design using real-world SC data and a complex SC framework to investigate further. Moreover, we would like to discuss and analyse more complex phenomena such as the bullwhip effect and the ripple effect utilising BC solutions.

Project Date:

Started in March 2019.
Expecting to submit the thesis in November 2022.
 

Achievement: 

Sarfaraz, A., Chakrabortty, R. K., & Essam, D. L. (2021). A tree structure-based improved blockchain framework for a secure online bidding system. Computers & Security, 102, 102147.