Abstract

[This abstract is based on the authors' abstract.]Ensuring that global supply chains are managed in ethical, safe, and environmentally friendly ways is challenging, particularly from the perspectives of data quality and data management. Despite the value it would provide, creating an accessible and auditable trail of information that captures a product’s journey through the supply chain has traditionally been cost prohibitive. Blockchain provides one potential mechanism for solving this problem. This article provides an in-depth examination of blockchain-based distributed ledger technologies in the context of global supply chain management (SCM). It contrasts trustless consensus environments, used by many cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, and permissioned consensus environments, more often in business applications like SCM. Transactional use cases are presented to illustrate key concepts in applying permissioned blockchain to SCM.