Now, I'm aware that many people dismiss blockchain technology as a usable medium to store information (instead of your typical SQL database), but one clear advantage is that it's decentralized, which prevents a central authority from tampering the data. For supply chain management, that's not a necessary property, but when you consider product certifications (e.g. biological produce, sustainable whatever, etc.) and authenticity, then decentralization (and immutability) clearly become benefits. While I don't think it's okay to use a blockchain because it's the cool thing to do nowadays, it certainly got me thinking.
In December 2017, there was an E. coli outbreak in Canadian romaine lettuce, killing some people in the eastern provinces. Health agencies tried to identify the cause of the contamination, but they abandoned the investigation after a few weeks [1].
I stumbled upon Provenance.org a few weeks ago, and as part of a student project, some colleagues and I decided to develop a Provenance.org clone, mostly as an excuse to learn Ethereum smart contract development and the Solidity programming language (DApps and all that jazz). One challenge we're currently running into is about the granularity of the the product tracking: should a single box of Ritz crackers have its own identifier? Should the entire pallet have a single identifier? How about raw materials that combine to form an entirely new product? Or a pig that's split up into multiple parts for markets to sell?
We're looking to open source the project at the end of the term (around May), so if you're interested, reach out to me.
As previously stated, blockchain technology might not be the solution to everything right now, but it's definitely interesting and fun to experiment with.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/public-healt...