Editor’s Note: In 2019, just about everyone in the technology world is talking about and writing about Blockchain distributed digital ledgers, including the supply management world. It’s not the cool new thing everyone’s talking about but hardly anyone’s doing — it’s real, and it’s happening. When mated with other emerging technologies and innovations, like connected devices (aka, “The Industrial/Internet of Things”), digital currencies, mobility, and virtual assistants, the sky is literally the limit for Blockchain. It has enormous potential to disrupt supply chain, risk management, procurement, and finance/accounts payable operations. Because of this potential we’ve been following Blockchain’s rise, development, and news cycle carefully. That is part of my job here at Ardent Partners — a job that I embrace as our resident “Tech Futurist.” So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the latest installment of When Blockchain Meets Supply Chain!
With Blockchain, IBM and Chainyard want You to Trust Your Supplier
Last month, news broke of a new collaboration between IBM (NYSE: IBM), Blockchain services and solutions provider, ChainYard, and a handful of household business names to launch a Blockchain-based supplier management network dubbed “Trust Your Supplier.” IBM, together with Chainyard and Anheuser-Busch InBev, Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Nokia, Schneider Electric and Vodafone, are working in concert with one another to go to market with this distributed digital ledger network that seeks to enhance supplier qualification, verification, onboarding, and lifecylce management.
IBM provides the Blockchain platform, Chainyard provides the specialized expertise, and their partners will provide their supplier data to create a supplier-centric platform that decreases supplier-onboarding times and increases the corresponding documentation available to users. Indeed, Trust Your Supplier creates a permanent and immutable audit trail that provides easier and faster access to industry-specific certification documents, insurance information, financial information, and product information. By placing much of this supplier information on a decentralized (distributed) digital ledger, users can take advantage of the network effect that Blockchain provides to worldwide users across industry lines.
Pfizer, Biogen Pilot Blockchain-based Clinical Trial Supply Chain Platform
Also last month, outsourcing-pharma.com broke a story regarding a joint pilot program between pharmaceutical giants, Pfizer and Biogen, and Blockchain solutions provider, LedgerDomain, to adopt and customize a Blockchain-based platform to manage the supply chains involving clinical trials for pharmaceutical drugs. Over the past two years, the companies have formed the Clinical Supply Blockchain Working Group, the story said. Together with third-party representatives, the Working Group has rather quietly developed a Blockchain-based platform that aids in the transmission and receipt of immutable, permanent, and secure communications between buyers, suppliers, and third parties involved in clinical trials.
According to the story, KitChain is the resultant platform, and is based upon Hyperledger, the open source Blockchain project developed by the Linux Foundation. Earlier this year, the Working Group conducted a test Advanced Shipping Notification and proof-of-delivery. The author states that the Working Group would like to deliver a Blockchain-based solution that is auditable, interoperable, secure, and transparent, that allows drug manufacturers and patients to track and compare prescription drugs from their point of manufacture to the patient. Longer term, the Working Group would like KitChain to become a communication and collaboration platform used by stakeholders across clinical supply chains that becomes “a single source of truth” for all parties.
MineHub, Amphora Partner to Optimize Commodity Trading and Risk Management
Finally, MineHub, a Blockchain solutions provider that seeks to digitize business processes within the minerals and mining industries, has partnered with Amphora, a commodity trading, transaction, and risk management (CTRM) solutions provider, to bring Blockchain to CTRM. This will be a symbiotic relationship between the two providers: MineHub’s Blockchain-based platform will act as a “connectivity layer” to Amphora’s client base, allowing MineHub to expand its customer base while also enabling Amphora to further digitize its customers’ CTRM operations, particularly the post-trade settlement process of mining transactions.
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