The chain integration pilot (CHIP) of the RFID laboratory at the University of Auburn in Alabama has published a proof-of-concept white paper which seeks to demonstrate that the efficiency savings blockchain technology can be unlocked at across the contemporary supply chain.
The proof of concept was designed to ingest, encode, distribute and store serialized data from several points in the supply chain on Hyperledger Fabric.
The pilot collected live data from the Nike, PVH Corp. brands. and Herman Kay, as well as the main American retailers Kohl’s and Macy’s.
CHIP was launched in 2018 and claims to be the first supply chain project to integrate information extracted from RFID tags into a blockchain network.
Blockchain as a supply chain data solution
The project saw data for 223,036 goods downloaded into a distributed ledger. Only 1% of the data entries were downloaded by stores, 87% of the data came from distribution centers and the remaining 12% came from a coding point.
As such, CHIP has determined that blockchain is a functional solution to the problems of exchanging serialized data within the supply chain. The report concludes that participating companies were able to “record transactions containing serialized data in a common language and share this data with their appropriate business partners”.
The document identifies “a huge amount of errors and inefficiencies in the currency supply systems,” saying that eliminating counterfeiting and narrowing the supply chain could unlock $ 181 in business opportunities.
Traditional supply chain tracking technologies deemed “outdated”
On the other hand, the document argues that existing exchange networks are designed for “outdated Internet technologies” and are not suitable for handling the massive volumes of serialized data generated throughout the contemporary supply chain. “
The team highlights the absence of “an effective industry-wide solution for the exchange of serialized data between business partners”, despite the introduction of serialized data such as RFID tags and QR codes there more than ten years ago.
In addition, the report argues that previous attempts to integrate infrastructure to collect mass information “throughout the supply chain have been” limited by the industry’s inability to share serialized data ” .