Cold Supply Chain Management

A blockchain & IoT-based cold supply chain solution that provides real-time tracking of temperature, humidity, and other parameters and ensures the safety and quality of goods. This improves increased confidence in products and the brand.

Cargo Airlines and Shipping Corporations are the key players in making the supply chain function run smoothly. The cold supply chain’s role is crucial in delivering environment-sensitive pharmaceuticals and perishable goods from manufacturers to end consumers without spoilage.

The revolutionary Blockchain technology, with inbuilt business transforming features ,eases the challenges in the cold supply chain as well as the entire supply chain industry. At Coforge, the digital blockchain solution on Azure cloud combines the aspects of IoT-enabled monitoring of assets, scalability and the ability to process, transmit and store millions of messages to provide a strategic edge to businesses.

Solution Need

• Traditional cold supply chain ecosystems lack tracking and tracing the root cause for any product damage during its transportation, which adds a lot of extra burden of investigation to identify the real cause for the settlement. Fixing responsibility for loss or damage of any product among the parties then is a big concern.
• Since each stakeholder uses individual systems, there is no single source of truth, which leads to issues like late reconciliation, improper tracking of products, etc. Businesses run on promises. Technically, there is no way that parties can trust each other for the information provided by them. Parties involved in the business workflow are not in accord with each other and might have a different version of the same information which harms the business health.
• If there is improper handling of products during transit, contamination becomes a possibility. Human errors in perishable consumables cannot be not ruled out. Since, all the information is centralized, in case of loss of server or database the entire information is lost.

Features

• Blockchain solution hosted on the cloud gives stakeholders an advantage investing less and scale up when the number of transactions increase.
• Sensor devices pre-configured with the required temperatures and humidity levels ensure that the levels remain intact and report any fluctuation immediately. Advance alerts on change in the environment including shock and vibrations help take remedial measures before the unit fails. Alerts also keeps any tampering in check
• Stakeholders can continue using their existing systems for cold supply chain management. APIs integrate database and services with the existing applications to provide a seamless usage of the solution.
• Distribution of identical copies of the same database is made available in a peer-to-peer network, which ensures that the data with all the stakeholders is in sync and with consensus mechanism there is no single point of failure.
• A record created in a blockchain platform cannot be altered. Algorithms ensure that database records are permanent, chronologically ordered and available to allstakeholders on the network.
• Smart Contracts are inherent to the blockchain platform, which safeguard the interests of affected parties by enforcing contractual obligations, ensuring ease of payments, and resolution of disputes
• Online user-friendly dashboards provide the product status, location, temperature, and humidity levels all in a single view and instantly.
• Accurate identification of lapses in delivery is possible. The solution helps accurately identify human errors at each stage and immediate notification to the stakeholders follows.

Benefits

• At each stop point in the chain, when the goods change hands, quick system built-in alerts help instil transparency.
• Flawless delivery from the OEM to the customer doorstep, backed by a robust platform, generates and builds trust and a long-term association with the partners. The immutable nature of blockchain helps prevent tampering of any data and builds trust.
• Businesses accomplish their mandatory compliances in a stress-free manner. Real-time tracking using tamper-proof sensors to detect temperatures, humidity levels allow for assured deliveries.
• As alerts send data on goods tampering, ensuring that the best quality of goods shipped to the end consumer.
• Earmarking of faulty consignments and enforcement of contractual obligations allow business processes to become more efficient.
• With a decrease in losses on damaged goods, businesses achieve higher returns. Fewer resources are required to manage the supply chain. The blockchain technology ensures 0% risk on the entry of counterfeit products, and higher gains in brand-loyalty.

Technology Stack:

R3 Corda, Nodejs, React, Mongodb