Track and Trace in the Supply Chain

A project that aims to make the supply chain easier to track and trace

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• About
• Problem Statement
• Current Scenario
• Concept
• Contributors

About

• This project was developed for Smart India Hackathon 2019.
• The problem statement is "Track and Trace Supply Chain" issued by Hindustan Unilever.
• We plan to implement a system that overlaps Unilever's existing Supply Chain Management System instead of rebuilding it from scratch.

Problem Statement

• Large companies like Hindustan Unilever have millions and millions of products flowing through the supply chain.
• This large scale of production could lead to faulty units or goods, which may need to be called back.
• A system is needed to pin-point the batch that needs to be called back, and the location of all the products in the said batch.
• This will improve the quality of products and quality of service that consumers and end-users receive from multinational companies, while making it easier for the said compaines to manage their supply chain.

Current Scenario

• The stakeholders in a generalised supply chain are as follows:
  1. Farmer
  2. Raw Material Supplier
  3. Factory
  4. Warehouse
  5. Distributor
  6. Retailer
  7. Consumer
• The transaction of goods happens in pallets, cartons and individual products.
• At the storage areas of every stake holder, there is a chance that products of different batches are grouped together. Hence, tracing and tracking of product batches becomes a hassel.

Concept

The idea is to design a system that can keep track of the flow of goods from pallets to cartons to individual products.

Manufacturing and storing in a Warehouse

• Once units are created, the container is scanned and then a product is scanned. Then the container is filled with products from the same batch. As a result, that container is mapped to the current batch of products.
• This container is mapped to a pallet in a similar fashion.
• Now, a pallet is added to a bin in the warehouse by mapping the pallet to the bin. If multiple containers are sent, then all of them are mapped to that pallet.

Dispatching from Warehouse

• The product that is to be dispatched is mapped to the container in which it will be shipped. The quantity of the product is entered.
• This ensures that a batch of products is tracked throughout the supply chain, even if it gets split at any point.

Blockchain

Immutability of data

• For compliance and security, IT infrastructure requires a high cost to maintain.
• The key things to maintain in this solution is data integrity.
• Blockchain comes out of the box with data integrity and tamper-proof data due to its decentralized nature.
• Development of the blockchain in multiple stakeholder structure is cost effective. It is easier to build, deploy and maintain.
• The current IT solutions require a lot of costs to maintain data integrity and security.

Hyperledger

• It is a private permissioned network.
• The key benefit of using Hyperledger as opposed to an open-blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum is the number of transactions per second. Hyperledger can do roughly 10,000 transactions per second, whereas Ethereum can do roughly 6-7 transactions per second.
• Data in permissioned networks is on need-to-know basis.
• Unlike Ethereum or Bitcoin, where all transactions are stored on one ledger, Hyperledger fabric has two different paths - one keeps track of data while the other keeps track of world state.
• In a Hyperledger fabric, each node cannot access all the data. The access to data that each stakeholder has is defined for each individual.
• The adoption of Hyperledger fabric is increasing rapidly among major enterprises like IBM and Linux Foundations.

Use Case

• We are using Hyperledger to store the data of products flowing in the supply chain.
• This data includes details like batch numbers, date of manufacture, path taken by a product in the supply chain, etc.
• No stakeholder can change, modify or tamper with this data. This prevents malpractices like tampering with data in databases to earn profit.
• Layers of stakeholders form a permission network to ensure security and immutability of data.

Web Interface

• The Web Interface allows stakeholders to view details of products pertaining to them.
• Stakeholders can view details like expected date of arrival, tranaction history, etc.
• Aditionally, Hindustan Unilever can view every detail of their products in the supply chain. This includes transactions between two stakeholders in the supply chain of a particular product.

Contributors

• Roshan James
• Calden Rodrigues
• Kyle Lobo
• Chaitanya Dukkipaty
• Rajasi Jaiswal
• Pratik Nerurkar