Role of blockchain in SC sustainability during pandemic

Hello, readers! I'm Mathews currently pursuing 2nd year MBA at Amrita School of Business, Coimbatore.   Here's my new blog post!

    With the onset of Coronavirus pandemic, hospitals struggled to procure quality and essential personal protective equipment (PPE) required for the frontline battle. Uncertainity in avalability, questionable quality of products and eroding trust in suppliers became the serious challenges.

Blockchain played a substantial role in SC sustainability during the pandemic. Blockchain technology can be most simply defined as a decentralized, distributed ledger that records the provenance of a digital asset.

This is how blockchain helped when the supply chain disruption hit:

1. Trust to survive the pandemic.

When the supply chain was hit by pandemic, the resulting shortages and quality distortions started to affect customer's trust. Blockchain ensured the trust among customers through third-party verifiers, immutable data, immutable logic and audit trail of supplier information. Participaton of trusted industry players and their contribution as validators, verifiers and solution providers boosted the confidence in supply chain.

2. Acceleration of on-time delivery with the help of better inventory visibility and transparency.

Inventory visibility and transparency into delivery timetables became the buyers biggest need from suppliers during supply shortages . The blockchain solved this problem by providing real time visibility and transparency across procurement, manufacturing, transportation and distribution. During pandemic, critical supply delivery lead time misinformation could even result in significant loss including lives.

3. Simple solutions to solve pain points has to be swift to the market.

One cannot build these solutions overnight when a pandemic hits as blockchain solutions for supply chain can be very complex. In order to be swift in the market, solutions that are proven and available in the market being used by suppliers over the years has to be re-used.  

4. Trusted digital identities bridged the trust gap between reality and the digital world.

Blockchain-based digital identity created trust by linking real-world identities and the digital world. Each physical object’s digital replica (called digital twin) is created in a way that prevents or reveals any human interference that alters information. For any digital business transaction on supply chain, it is substantially important to prove the authenticity of one’s own identity and that of the transaction partner.

    Blockchain also contributed to supply chain resiliency through data privacy, confidentiality of shared data, and innovative business models that glued together stakeholders in the ecosystem. With rising blockchain supply chain solutions, and interoperability actively being addressed, our world will have quicker resilience when we encounter the next pandemic.