Developing trust in the food industry through block chain technology

The customers these days are more demanding than ever and are highly concerned about the authenticity and purity of each product they consume. Food industry too has the issue if not more than other industries in the present market. Empowered by globalization and too many options in the market it’s cut throat competition for the retailers and the customers demand authentic and ethically sourced products than ever before. This leaves retailers with no option but to bring more visibility into the movement of produce from the farm to home. From the point of view of retailers, even under the current status of visibility the food supply chain is very much tangled considering the length of supply chain and the associated operational issues.

Our POC is capable of solving maximum issues if not all in the supply chain, it can be customized to suit different scenarios as per the client demands.

Below mentioned are the issues which need to be solved at the earliest

The current supply chain lacks traceability of the final product. The place of origin of ingredients and the quality of ingredients cannot be traced back with accuracy.
Custodian information cannot be traced real time.
Information flow is not proper throughout the supply chain.
Transparency of the supply chain needs to be improved.

Implementation of block chain technology brings in the following features mentioned below to the supply chain.

Distributed ledger– The information fed is fed into the block chain after consensus from all the parties of the block chain and it’s made visible to all the relevant members of the block chain.

Immutability– The data once stored is permanent which cannot be altered. If the data is updated, the updated data is stored in new blocks.

Smart contracts- The transactions can be done smart contracts agreed between all members of the block chain. This leads to less manual work and more automatic work. The usual delay in information flow is also dealt with by the implementation of smart

Proof Of Concept

The seven major parties in the network.

Farmer
Transportation facility between the farmer and the factory owner
Bank handling Factory owner’s bank account
Factory owner or Wholesaler
Transportation facility between the farmer and the factory owner
Bank handling retailer’s bank account
Retailer

The list of relevant documents in the transaction

Smart contract between farmer and factory owner
Smart contract between factory owner and retailer
Quality inspection certificate before the material is passed from farmer to the factory owner.
Delivery receipt when the material is passed from the farmer to the factory owner’s driver.
Bank transaction between farmer and factory owner.
Quality inspection certificate before the material is passed from the factory owner to the retailer..
Delivery receipt when the material is passed from the factory owner to the retailer’s driver.
Bank transaction between retailer and factory owner.

Upon confirmation from the farmer about the readiness of material, the factory owner arranges for the transport facility. The farmer arranges for the quality inspection and the quality inspection certificate is uploaded into the portal. Once the material is handed over to the factory owner’s transport facility the delivery receipt is passed to the farmer. He uploads the document to the portal. When both the delivery receipt and the quality certificate is uploaded the smart contract between the farmer and the factory owner becomes active. This intimates the factory owner’s bank to initiate the payment to the farmer.

Once the food product is processed in the factory and is ready for sale, the retailer is intimated. In return the retailer arranges for the transportation facility. The factory owner arranges for the quality inspection and quality inspection certificate is uploaded to the portal. Once the material is handed over to the retailer’s transport facility the delivery receipt is passed to the factory owner. He uploads the document to the portal. When both the delivery receipt and the quality certificate is uploaded the smart contract between the retailer and the factory owner becomes active. This intimates the retailer’s bank to initiate the payment to the factory owner.

Our block chain solution is scalable and any number of retailers, farmers or factories can be added as the business demands.

Moreover, under situations where the material to be transported has any particular storage conditions like temperature or humidity, IoT devices can be planted in the container and the condition can be monitored continuously. The data will be fed into the system at regular intervals. At any point of time, if the storage conditions are not met, the subsequent party can reject the consignment. This clause can be included in the smart contract which will be activated if there is occurence of a similar situation.

Attached the flowchart for material flow in the supply chain. Data is fed into the block chain during each transaction. The fed data can be used to have the barcode designed and pasted on the final product. The final product barcode when scanned in the final retail outlet reveals all details starting from the origin of the food product and even the logistics service provider who had provided transportation service at each stage.

Advantages block chain solution brought into Supply Chain

Improved supply chain transparency
Smart contracts for untrusted parties which activates automatically
Real time information access
Availability of auditable records
Electronic decentralized ledger available to view for everyone
Simplified commodity tracking
Proof of ownership

Let’s work towards building a future-ready enterprise

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