A blockchain framework for traceability in supply chain manegement

Abstract

Advances in information and communication technologies have reduced the physical, political and cultural barriers between nations. These technologies have enabled globalization to access raw materials, goods, and services. The complex web of relationships that provide materials, manufacture the components, assemble or mix the parts and deliver the final product to market is known as the supply chain. The rapid growth of Internet technologies allowed the onset of many emerging technologies applied in traceability systems, in the supply chain area. However, these systems tend to be centralized, monopolistic, asymmetric, and opaque. Consequently, these systems result in trust problems, such as fraud, corruption, tampering and falsifying information. Likewise, by being a single point of failure, a centralized system is vulnerable to collapse. Nowadays, a new technology called the blockchain presents a whole new approach based on decentralization. Nonetheless, being in its early stages has some challenges to deal with, in which traceability, scalability, and performance become mainly defiance to face the massive amount of data in the real world. This work is intended to provide a blockchain-based framework to facilitate the development of applications for traceability in supply chain management.