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

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Track and Trace in the Supply Chain

TraceIT


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

Table of Contents

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.

Working

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.

Why 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.

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