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bankers, and other intermediaries
who’ve historically filled overseers’
roles. In its simplest form, parties
within an extended supply chain
add “blocks” of information to the
broader chain. The blocks could
identify as much information as
the stakeholders deem necessary for
the transaction to progress and be
consummated. Cheating would be
virtually impossible, because each
step in a transaction, whether open
to the public or restricted to specific
stakeholders (the latter being what
is envisioned in trucking), would be
witnessed by everyone in the chain.
At the heart of a blockchain’s appeal
is the development of so-called smart
contracts, or self-executing contracts
that would not require a third party to
validate them. As envisioned, contracts
could be converted to computer code,
stored, then replicated on the system
and supervised by a network of computers that run the blockchain. Smart
contracts enable the exchange of money,
property, shares, or anything of value
in a transparent and conflict-free way,
while avoiding the services of a middleman, according to supporters of the
blockchain process. Like a traditional
contract, these new compacts would
define applicable rules and automatically enforce those obligations, proponents
say. Smart contracts are the “holy grail”
of the blockchain concept, said Craig of
McLeod.
It is no secret that global supply chains
running on legacy systems often get
bogged down in the back-and-forth of
obtaining multiple approvals for transactions, and are vulnerable to loss and
fraud. A blockchain prevents this by
providing a secure and quickly accessible digital version to all parties in the
chain, advocates say.
“We all collectively work to integrate
one level upstream or downstream
through point-to-point integration. But
then we lose the ability to view the
extended supply chain beyond those
direct relationships,” Shanton Wilcox,
a partner at Infosys Consulting, a Palo
Alto, Calif.-based firm that works with
logistics service providers, among others, said in a recent webcast sponsored
by the investment firm Stifel.
By charting each step of a transaction
in the form of blocks that are validated
before they are added, a blockchain process cuts the time lag incurred in achieving extended visibility and reduces the
risk of information’s being corrupted as
it moves through the chain, Wilcox said.
Companies that have explored a blockchain for transportation have done so
gingerly, to say the least. Danish ocean
carrier Maersk Line is probably the furthest along, having completed a test of
managing Maersk’s cargoes using blockchain in collaboration with IT giant
