A project that aims to make the supply chain easier to track and trace
- 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.
- 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.
- The stakeholders in a generalised supply chain are as follows:
- Farmer
- Raw Material Supplier
- Factory
- Warehouse
- Distributor
- Retailer
- 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.
The idea is to design a system that can keep track of the flow of goods from pallets to cartons to individual products.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.